


baby, let's take the long way home

by iwantthemtostay



Series: baby, let's take the long way home [1]
Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Step-siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-13
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-27 05:55:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 52,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17761061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iwantthemtostay/pseuds/iwantthemtostay
Summary: Tessa’s mom and Scott’s dad got married on a cruise ten years ago, and now Tessa and Scott are the only ones available to plan the anniversary party. The only problem is that they haven’t spoken much in all that time.Except for that one summer.





	1. I miss you, I mean it, I tried not to feel it

**Author's Note:**

  * For [awakeanddreaming](https://archiveofourown.org/users/awakeanddreaming/gifts), [EastFromEden](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EastFromEden/gifts), [falsettodrop](https://archiveofourown.org/users/falsettodrop/gifts), [only_because3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/only_because3/gifts).



> For awakeanddreaming who wanted first time and T&S falling in love as kids/teenagers and being separated, for EastFromEden who wanted them as people who had to organise an event for their parents (this is a little different from your prompt, but I hope you like it!), for falsettodrop because step-siblings, and for only_because3, you know which parts are for you. 
> 
> And for everyone else: happy Valentine’s! <3 This fic will be updated over the next two/three days :)
> 
> Thank you to only_because3 and a friend who must remain anonymous for now for all their help and encouragement, and I am forever grateful to soshedances for all her help and patience with my questions about ballet. 
> 
> Work title from [Let's Get Lost](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2BGjJ_4BTk)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NBS = National Ballet School
> 
> Chapter title from [Your Type](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlFMVzo9zuE)

_January 2015_

Tessa chokes on her coffee when Scott appears in front of her table in the small Toronto bistro her sister loves. The choking is embarrassing enough, but to make matters much worse she’s only just getting over a bad cold, so the choking starts off a coughing fit which leads to her sneezing before she can grab a tissue. She didn’t want to have snot on her face the first time she was in close quarters with Scott in, well, however long it’s been. 

He hands her a napkin and pours her some water from the carafe on the table. 

“Thank you,” she splutters. “Very kind. I, uh, had a nasty cold.”

Scott puts his hands on the back of the chair facing hers. “There’s a bad one going around. A bunch of kids at the rink caught it coming home from Nationals.” 

Tessa nods her head slowly, several times. “I, um, I thought…”

“I thought I was meeting Jordan.” He smiles apologetically, pushing his hair back like he used to when he got nervous, and fuck him for looking so attractive. 

“I thought I was meeting Charlie. Jordan got pulled onto a big case and she’s not going to have time to plan the anniversary party. I’m in rehearsals right now so it makes more sense for me to do it.” Please let him say that Charlie just can’t make it today.

His hands tighten on the chair. “Uh, similar story on my end. Charlie just got promoted at the station so he won’t have much time to help out.” 

“Oh, that’s great! He was talking about that over Christmas. I should text him.” Shit. Danny’s in Alberta, Kevin too, and Casey’s snowed under with the new baby. “So, I guess that means it’s just the two of us.” 

“Uh, yeah. I guess it does. If that’s okay with you?” 

She taps her hands on the table. “That’s fine. We can… uh, it will be… yeah.” Scott’s biting his lip, and apparently that still distracts her. “You should sit!” she says, much too loudly. 

He pulls the chair out and sits down, his puffer jacket still zipped up. 

“You could take your coat off too,” she suggests. “It’s pretty hot in here.” After he does so she hands him the menu. “Jordan comes here all the time. The soup is really good.” 

The woman at the next table who’s been perusing the menu for the better part of the last ten minutes looks up at her and smiles. At least she can help one person today. 

“You should keep eating yours, especially if you’ve been sick.”

She had quite forgotten about it. She spoons up some of the spicy lentil soup and is happy to realise it’s still warm. “Did you drive down from Barrie?”

“Yeah, I just had some coaching sessions in the morning, none this afternoon, so it worked out well.” The expression on his face suggests that he’s rethinking that.

“How do you like coaching? Joe… your dad said your teams did well at Nationals. It must have been weird to not be competing.” She should really save some potential conversation starters for later instead of blurting them all out at once.

“I love it. I, uh, didn’t really know what I wanted to do after Alex decided to retire, but I think I’m doing what I’m meant to be doing.” He fiddles with the metal hinges on the menu. “It was a bit strange at first, being there but not competing, and then again once it was just the senior events, but I was really busy with the kids. They did awesome, we had one team take silver at junior, and one take bronze at novice.” His enthusiasm slips through his discomfort at being here.

“That’s great.” She stirs her soup, thinking, before she says, “I’m sorry I never reached out to congratulate you last year.” Or on any of the other medals they’d won. “I actually thought you two should have won. I don’t know anything about the skating part, but from a dance perspective you were worlds ahead.” 

“Thanks, Tessa.” It’s been so, so long since she’s heard him say her name. “I haven’t been great at congratulating you on your achievements either. Being a principal by 23 was a pretty big deal. And anyone I hear talking about ballet raves about you. All Keira will talk about is _The Nutcracker_ ever since last month.” 

Tessa smiles, her first since he arrived. “She was really excited to get to go backstage with Charlie and Nicole. I’m pretty sure she thinks I’m actually a fairy now though.” She’s stopped calling her Auntie Tess in favour of Sugar Plum Fairy, usually in a whisper like it’s a secret. 

The waitress comes then and Scott orders the soup. Tessa startles a little when he says that his friend recommended it. She’s not sure they’ve ever been described as friends before. There’s an awkward silence after that, and she takes it upon herself to break it. “How’s Alex?”

Scott blinks at her. “My skating partner, Alex?” 

She nods, that’s what he’d called her earlier, not Alexandra, and what other Alex could she be referring to? She wonders if they really are dating, she’s as out of the loop as the majority of Canada in that regard. Their shared family members are always very careful never to mention his love life to her, she presumes it’s the same for him. 

“Um, she’s doing good. Really busy though. She’s back in Detroit finishing off her undergrad _and_ trying to prep for the LSATs.”

“That’s insane! She’s an Olympic medallist and now she’s going to be a lawyer?” She’s also ridiculously pretty, Tessa thinks it’s unfair she gets to be super smart on top of being an incredible athlete. 

Scott grins. “She’s determined to show me up. I only have a high school diploma.” 

“Me too.” 

The conversation jolts to a halt, like they’re both surprised at having a semi-normal chat. 

“So, this wedding anniversary party,” Scott says.

“Yes! The reason we’re here! Can you believe it’s been ten years?!”

“No, it feels like a lifetime ago.” 

Tessa sometimes thinks it could have been yesterday that her mom came to visit her at NBS to tell her the news. She opens her planner to February and places it at the centre of the table between them. “Well, Jordan got all the dates of the Caribbean cruise they’re going on seeing as the one they met on isn’t running anymore. They’re going to be back for the actual day, Valentine’s, which is a Saturday, so I think that’s the perfect time. I started thinking about it all this morning once Jordan passed the baton, and I think we could have their first cruise as the theme? So, food from the countries they visited and kind of European or nautical decorations?” 

“Yeah, that sounds great.” He’s about to say something else but is cut off by the waitress coming with his soup. When he smiles and thanks her she blushes and then looks between him and Tessa before leaving. Tessa doesn’t know quite how she feels about all that. After Scott takes a sip, he looks up at her, “This is delicious.” He’s so impressed that she thinks anyone watching would swear she’d made it herself. 

“Jordan comes here all the time, it’s pretty close to her work. Oh, maybe she could give Alex some tips on the LSATs! She did so well, and I’m sure she still has her notes somewhere.” Jordan is a bit of a hoarder. Tessa had given her a book about the life-changing magic of tidying up for Christmas, but she doesn’t think her sister appreciated it. 

“That’s a really good idea, I’ll message her later.” Scott starts spreading butter on the crusty white bread that accompanies the soup. “And your ideas for the party really are great. I had none, honestly. But I can help with planning, and inviting people, and setting everything up.” 

Jesus, how much time are they going to be spending together? Her phone starts buzzing. “Oh, it’s your dad.” Does he know somehow?! She thinks about going outside to answer it, but it’s so cold, and Scott motions for her to go ahead. 

“Hi Joe, how are you?”

“I’m great! What about you, Tess? Are you still drinking the hot orange with honey?”

A smile starts playing on her lips, one she feels kind of self-conscious about in front of Scott. “Yes, it’s really been helping. I’m feeling a lot better.”

“Take it easy at rehearsals, okay hon? You don’t want to push too hard and end up getting sicker, or injured.” 

“I know, I’m being careful.” 

“Good. Okay, your mom wants to talk to you now, her phone is on the blink again. Take care, Tess. Love you.”

“Love you, too,” she answers automatically, not thinking about her audience. 

“Hi sweetheart!” The line crackles, it sounds like her mom is on the move. “Joe had you on loudspeaker, but you’re off it now. I’m just going into the living room.”

“Is everything okay?” She talks to them regularly, but usually not during the middle of the day.

“Yes, we’re just making some plans and wanted to check in with you.” She hears her mom sit down, and pictures her in her favourite armchair. “As you know, we’re going on a cruise for our anniversary, but we booked one so that we could be back in time for the day itself so we could spend it at home with family. And, well, we were thinking a small dinner with just the kids and their partners, but…” She waits for her mom to say it. “That would mean you and Scott together with not many others, and I wanted to know if you’d be okay with that?”

Tessa feels this urge to laugh rush through her, it’s a hysterical one, and she has to pinch her thigh to stop herself. “Mom, we’re both adults. It will be fine.” 

Scott raises his eyebrows at her and she nods. He widens his eyes and looks around as if for spies, and this time she bites her lip to stop herself from laughing. 

“I know that, honey, but… have you two even been in a small group together since…” That summer nine and a half years ago? No. 

“Maybe we should. It might be good for us.” 

Scott does laugh then, and she clamps her hand against the speaker. “Where are you, Tess?”

“Tanith and I met Charlie for lunch. I’m on maid of honour duty for wedding planning.” The planning part is at least accurate, and the wedding part not too far away.

“Oh, I won’t keep you, it must be nearly time to be getting back.” When Tessa checks the time she’s surprised to see that her mom is correct. “I’ll talk to you soon! Love you!” She hangs up before there’s a chance to reply.

“They rang to talk about me?!” Scott asks.

“Um, yeah. They’re planning a family dinner for the anniversary and they wanted to make sure I was okay with… being there with you I guess? Your dad will probably call you later.” 

“If only they knew….” He coughs, like he realises this mightn’t be the best thing to say, given their history. 

“Indeed. Um, I kind of need to get going, so we should exchange numbers and talk more soon to start making some concrete plans?”

“Yeah, of course. My number is the same.” Just as she’s about to make some excuse about changing phones rather than admit that she deleted it, he says, “But you probably don’t have it anymore.” 

She just shakes her head and hands him her phone. She starts pulling on her layers as he types it in, trying to avoid hitting her voluminous scarf off anything on the table. 

“Thank you,” she says, stuffing her phone back in her handbag. “I’ll text you later so that you have my number, and I’ll send on some details of caterers I’ve been checking out.” 

“Thank you, Tessa. Really.” Scott looks like he’s trying to decide if he should get up to shake her hand, or maybe even give her a hug. 

She bolts, wishing him a good day and a safe trip back to Barrie. Before she turns on her music to drown out the noises in her head, she allows herself to think that it had it gone pretty well. Not bad for what might have been her first time alone with the step-brother she lost her virginity to almost a decade ago at least. 

It’s a short enough journey to the Walter Carsen Centre, but the rehearsal room is starting to fill up by the time she gets there. Tanith is waiting for her with her usual smile. “Eating lunch without you was weird. How did party planning go with Charlie?” She pauses, “That’s also kind of weird, can we call him your Charlie?” 

Tessa rolls out her mat and sits down beside her. “Well, Charlie Moir is too busy to help out, so I met up with Scott, and it’s him I’m going to be planning the party with.” She hears her voice getting increasingly ragged the longer the sentence goes on.

“Scott?” Tanith repeats. “Scott as in?” 

“Yes,” Tessa whispers, putting her finger to her mouth to shush her friend.

Tanith looks a little hurt, lowering her voice. “You know I would never say anything that would…” 

“I do, I’m sorry. I just…” Fuck, why does she feel like crying? “I wasn’t expecting to see him. And now I have to work with him and I don’t know how that’s going to go.” It’s only hitting her now, somehow. That he’s going to be a constant in her life for the next few weeks, not the person she awkwardly avoids at the rare family gatherings they both attend. She sees him more often secretly, furtively, in those moments she searches his name online, going through videos and articles and his rare social media posts, binging until she feels worse than she had when she started. At least she’s stopped wearing that old Skate Canada t-shirt (not that she’s been able to throw it out). 

Tanith puts a hand to her elbow. “Do you want to head home? You’re still recovering, you don’t need to be here.” 

“No, I should try not to dwell.” At least here she can focus on dancing, not worrying over when or whether she should message him. 

As they start stretching, Tanith asks, “Did Jordan know it was going to be… him you were meeting up with?”

“Definitely not.” That could be a fun phone call later. Tessa looks around, she’s spent enough of her life in rooms like this to know exactly how to modulate her voice so that no one but Tanith can hear. “She thought it would be one of the step-brothers whose dicks I haven’t had in my mouth.” 

Tanith chokes. “Okay, so we’re going straight for dark humour as a coping mechanism, good to know.” 

“Dark humour and dancing,” Tessa says, stretching her arms behind her back. “Crying, chocolate, and wine are sadly not available options right now.”

“We should do that tonight.” Tanith mirrors her movements. “You should come home with me after conditioning.”

“You’re sure you’re not busy?” It sounds like exactly what she needs.

“Never too busy for you.” 

Tessa’s glad she’s in a plank facing away from Tanith so that her friend won’t see her tearing up and demand she go home already. 

“We can talk about it properly later, if you want, but before Krylova comes in… what was it like?”

Tessa switches positions so that she’s facing Tanith. “It was… like being alone with someone for the first time in nearly ten years and not knowing what to say.”

“Well, you were alone together in a supply closet at Charlie’s wedding.” 

“We didn’t talk much then,” she says drily. “If that even happened.” Tessa had stupidly paired the painkillers she was on for her compartment syndrome with a large quantity of alcohol. There’s a non-zero chance that her memories of making out with Scott that night are entirely a figment of her imagination. 

“Is he as good-looking in person?” 

“Tanith!” Tessa sounds like her mom, which feels extra uncomfortable considering what they’re discussing.

“What? I thought we were going for humour!”

“You weren’t joking.” Tessa is distracted by Guillaume, the new French dancer, blowing her a kiss when he saunters into the room. She returns it and puts her eyes back on Tanith. “He is though, better even.” 

That Scott was attractive was just a cold fact when she was looking at photos or his performances. It was something a lot more tangible when he was sitting across from her, worrying his lip or running a hand through his hair. She knew how those lips tasted, and what his hair felt like in her hands. She remembers his body the way it was back then, but she doesn’t know it now. And she can’t let herself think about it. He’s her step-brother, and they’re going to plan a nice party for their parents, and everything is going to be fine. 

Anjelika comes in, clapping her hands to get everyone’s attention, and Tessa and Tanith rise and take their places side by side at the mirrored wall. As her hand grips the barre she ignores the memory of her back pressed against one back at home, and Scott’s mouth at her ear and his hands all over. 

Tessa takes a deep breath, clears her mind, and focuses on the one thing that’s always made sense.


	2. it's as simple as something that nobody knows

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title (and more or less a line of fic to be perfectly honest) from [Bubble Toes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc4D42hn-Ww)

_May 2005_

Being dragged to Toronto to watch his snooty new step-sister dance is not Scott’s idea of a good Friday night. His dad had guilted him into it so they could support Tessa as a family. These people aren’t his family. His family are his mom, his dad, and his brothers. He likes Kate well enough, she’s kind, if a lot more reserved than his own mom, and she makes his dad happy (even if he still thinks them getting married on a fucking cruise after knowing each other a week was batshit crazy), but she’s not family. And Tessa, who barely spoke to him and had acted like moving to Ilderton was torture, was certainly not family. He’s only met her older brothers once, and her sister maybe three times. They’d seemed alright, but still not family. Scott’s only attending this stupid spring showcase because her sibling aren’t due to finals or work and it had made him feel bad for Tessa, even is she was annoying. If they’d been going he would have had no qualms heading straight to Ilderton from Barrie and spending the night with his buddies instead. But here he is.

It’s a surprisingly quick trip for a Friday evening and he arrives at the National Ballet School a little early. It’s the fanciest school he’s ever seen, and he thinks it’s no wonder that Tessa, who’d said she loved living in Toronto because it was “so sophisticated”, likes it so much here. 

Kate is waiting for him at the entrance, clutching a plastic glass of wine, and looking kind of nervous. She waves him over. “Oh Scott, it’s so good of you to come. Your dad is just in the bathroom.” She hands him a leaflet. “This is the programme. Tessa’s in the new work, by David Wilson. The classical work the other students are doing excerpts from is _The Sleeping Beauty_ , have you seen it? Did you have a good drive down? Are you tired?” 

He blinks, unsure of what to answer first. 

“I’m sorry.” She takes a sip of her wine. “I get so nervous before Tessa performs. I think the calmer she’s got about it, the worse I’ve become.” 

“Maybe you’re feeling her nerves for her.” That’s what his mom said she’d do for him back when he started competing.

Kate smiles, “Maybe I am. That’s a nice idea, Scott.” 

“And I’m not tired, the drive was good, and I haven’t seen _The Sleeping Beauty_.”

She laughs then. “I’m glad. It’s one of my favourites, Tessa’s too.” She looks over her shoulder. “Oh, there’s your dad.”

Scott is wrapped into a hug almost before he sees him, and he immediately feels bad about wanting to spend any less time with his dad than possible. He’s used to living apart from him for most of the week by now, but he still misses him.

“It’s so good to see you, Scott.”

“You too.” 

His dad steps back, putting his arm around Kate. “We really appreciate you coming.”

“Tessa will too,” Kate adds. 

A group of women come over then, greeting Kate like old friends, and he and his dad get introduced to them one by one. They’re all moms of other students, both current and former. He hovers at the edge of the circle and smiles when it seems to be expected of him. 

His phone starts buzzing in his pocket. It’s his mom. Shit. “Dad, I forgot to tell Mom I made it to Toronto okay, I need to get this.” 

It’s a short call, mainly him apologising and his mom reminding him to put his phone on silent for the show. When he goes back in, a man in his thirties or forties stops him just as he’s about to get to his dad, Kate, and the ballet moms. 

“Sorry, I noticed you with that woman with the blonde bob earlier, is that Kate Virtue?”

“Yeah, it is.”

“Oh good, she’s the one I’m looking for. I’m David Wilson, I choreographed the piece Tessa is dancing.” The man smiles, shaking Scott’s hand. “You look a bit young to be one of her brothers, are you a boyfriend?” 

Scott coughs. “No, no, I’m her step-brother.”

“Oh yes! I knew her mom got remarried recently. Sorry, I’m not usually this nosy, but one of the major themes in the work is family, so we got talking about ours when exploring ideas.” 

Scott smiles awkwardly, he doesn’t know how to continue this conversation. Thankfully, the moms leave and David steps closer to Kate.

“Oh,” she says, clearly recognising him. “It’s such a privilege to meet you! Tessa is so proud and honoured to get to dance this part.” 

He shakes her hand, and then Scott’s dad’s. “It wouldn’t be the part it is without her. She’s a joy to work with.” Kate beams. “We’re lucky to have her here, she’s a very talented girl.” David squeezes Kate’s hand again, “I had better let you find your seats. Hopefully we’ll get a chance to talk more after.” 

When he leaves Kate says, “Oh, why do I feel even more nervous now?” before guiding them into the auditorium. As they go in she tells them about how David was a very promising dancer whose career was cut short due to some disease with a funny name before he turned to choreography. 

The first performance is an original work by another choreographer, and it’s nice, but boring enough that he finds himself regretting agreeing to come. When it’s time for the piece Tessa is starring in he sees his dad take Kate’s hand. 

And then Tessa is onstage and he is transfixed.

He’s never seen anybody move the way she does. He’s seen graceful and fluid dancers before (Alex Paul back at the rink, who could have been his partner if he hadn’t broken his ankle snowboarding just before she went looking), but Tessa is on a whole other level. There’s this clarity to everything she does and it feels like she’s the one living the story of the dance, while everyone else is just pretending. He doesn’t much notice the other people dancing, it’s like she’s the only one he can see. 

There’s another thing, too. Tessa is beautiful. Scott isn’t blind, or stupid. His first thought when he met her was that she was pretty. But he’s been able to quite successfully ignore that, because she kind of rubs him the wrong way, and she’s his step-sister, and just a kid. Except, she doesn’t feel like any kind of sister, and there’s a voice in his head reminding him that she’s sixteen next week, and really not that much younger than him at all. She’s probably a lot more mature than he is if she’s able to invite everyone in and take them on a journey with her.

When the music ends and the dancers take their bows, he notices that Kate is crying. It jolts him back to real life. Tessa’s mom is married to his dad, he shouldn’t be noticing how long her legs are or how gorgeous she is in light blue. 

But his mind keeps going back to her, all through the intermission, and even all through the excerpts from _The Sleeping Beauty_. He can see that all the other students performing are talented too, but none of them capture his attention like Tessa had. 

Afterwards they’re told to go into the school cafeteria, which is an atrium really, and a whole lot fancier than the cafeterias at any of the schools Scott has attended. He’s grabbing some vol au vents when he sees Tessa come in with a gaggle of girls he recognises from the showcase. She says something and they all burst out laughing. It takes him aback a little, that Tessa is the funny one, that she’s the centre of a group of friends. She always has her head stuck in a book at home. She’s been nothing but awkward around him, and she hadn’t been any more excited than he had when his dad had suggested that he take her to meet his friends. Back then Scott had thought it was because she was snobby, but now he realises it’s probably just that she has her own friends and doesn’t feel like making more in a place she’s rarely in.

Kate calls her name and when Tessa sees her mom she gives her this smile that’s pure sunbeam, and somehow she’s even more beautiful than she had been onstage. She leaves her friends and rushes over to Kate, giving her a huge hug. Scott takes his time returning to his dad’s side, feeling strangely nervous about what he’s going to say to Tessa. It’s a long hug, and then Kate takes Tessa’s face in her hands and says something to her that Scott can’t hear but makes Tessa smile. 

He’s still hanging back a little, behind his dad, when they turn. “You were wonderful, Tessa,” his dad says.

“Oh, thank you so much. It was really nice of you to come.” He likes that she’s always polite to his dad. 

Scott shuffles over, trying to think of something to say that isn’t weird or revealing. “You’re really talented.”

Tessa blushes, cherry blossoms on her cheeks. “I, uh, I didn’t know you’d be here.” She reddens further to roses. “I mean, thank you.” Her hands fiddle with the buttons on her cardigan before she looks around the room. “Mom, have you seen Dad?” 

Kate’s smile falters a little. “No, honey, not yet. Did he say he’d be here?” 

Tessa’s shoulders droop a little, it’s extra noticeable because her posture is usually perfect. “Yeah, he couldn’t make it on Wednesday because he got caught up at work, but he said he had new tickets for tonight.” 

“Well, maybe he’s talking to someone, or had to head out straight after.” Kate isn’t entirely convincing. “You could check your phone to see if he messaged you.”

Tessa’s arms stay crossed over her stomach and she gives her mom a weak smile. “It’s fine.” 

It’s not fine, in Scott’s opinion. What kind of father wouldn’t go see his daughter perform at an event like this?

He can tell his dad is feeling uncomfortable too, but they’re saved from having to say anything when a slim, blonde girl arrives, flinging her arms around Tessa. 

“You were amazing! I’m so, so, so proud of you!” 

Tessa’s face brightens again as she hugs her friend back. “I didn’t know if you’d be able to make it out of rehearsals!”

“I may have skipped out on stretching afterwards, but I did some during intermission after I got to see you, so it’s fine.” Tessa squeezes her again.

Her friend lets go, and smiles at Kate. “Hi Mrs Vir… I mean, Mrs…” Her face whitens.

“Kate is fine, Tanith, please.” Kate introduces the girl to him and his dad as Tanith Belbin, and says she had been assigned to be Tessa’s buddy the year Tessa started at NBS. 

“Are you dancing with the National Ballet, Tanith?” his dad asks.

“Yes, I’m in the corps de ballet.” She puts her arm around Tessa, “Just waiting for this one to join me in two years.” 

Tessa frowns. “Probably not two years. I’d have to do the apprenticeship, and I mightn’t get asked at all.”

Tanith rolls her eyes a little. “Sasha Cohen went straight to the corps in my year, and you’re much better than she was.” 

“I don’t really think…” Tessa gets interrupted when the guy she’d been partnered with, Jeremy, and his parents come over to talk. 

Scott feels really out of the loop with all the discussion of dancers, and life at the school, and he’s very relieved when his dad leans over and whispers that it’s okay if he wants to head home. 

Kate hugs him when he says goodbye, and tells Tessa to lead him out because the building can be confusing. 

They’re silent down the first corridor until Tessa says, “I used to get lost all the time my first year.”

“Yeah?” They’re rarely alone together, and after all his staring at her earlier he feels at sea. “I, um, I’m sorry your dad couldn’t make it.” 

She swivels her head towards him sharply, and he thinks she’s going to be mad, but she just looks surprised. “Thanks.” She laughs, bitter and clipped. “I should know better by now though.”

This school really is kind of a maze, he doesn’t know how they’re at the entrance. “Well, I guess I’ll see you at home soon.” 

“Uh, yeah. I’ll see you in Ilderton.” 

He resists the urge to roll his eyes. It’s fair that Ilderton isn’t home to her yet, really. “Bye, Tessa.”

It’s only as he’s turning down the street to where he parked his car that he realises she’d waited to wave goodbye, and he waves back.

Scott doesn’t know quite what to make of Tessa. But he’d better stomp out any thoughts about her that aren’t strictly appropriate. That would be a stupid, lonely road to go down. 

 

_June 2005_

Scott’s playing his music ridiculously loud again. Tessa had thought things were getting better between them, it had been like bit by bit he was making more of an effort, and then he even came to the spring showcase and was so nice to her there. But any of the weekends she’s been in Ilderton after that he’s been getting progressively more sullen and speaking to her less. He could barely look at her when she went down for breakfast this morning! She knows she hasn’t been the easiest person to get along with, but she wasn’t expecting to be landed with a step-brother. Certainly not one who looked like Scott. 

She doesn’t want to knock on his door and tell him to turn it down, so she goes to her mom’s room to ask her to do it. Or her mom and Joe’s room really. She knocks on the door and her mom calls, “Come in!”

When she opens the door she sees that her mom is sitting at the vanity table she’d brought with her from their home in London, screwing in the back of her earrings. “Hi honey, is everything okay?”

She looks so happy. Jordan thinks her mom looks younger ever since she came back from the cruise, and Tessa has to agree with her. Even though the past few months have been so weird, Tessa can’t ignore that her mom is happier than she’s been in a long time. It can be kind of nauseating (the sight of her mom making out with anyone is something Tessa never needed to see) but her mom deserves to be with someone who loves her like Joe does. Tessa just wishes they’d started dating like normal people instead of getting married on that stupid cruise, like something out of the fucking _Parent Trap_. It was so out of character for her mom, who is usually so careful and thinks everything through. But maybe love is like that, makes you do crazy things. 

She and Joe are going out to a nice restaurant in London tonight, it’s one her mom has wanted to try for a while. Tessa doesn’t want to ruin her night by involving her in some disagreement with Scott.

“Yes, everything’s fine. I just, um, wanted to say I was sorry about yesterday.” 

She’d been a bit of a brat. It just didn’t seem fair that she had to stay here for the full two weeks off before summer school. Tanith had enough room for her to stay in her apartment in Toronto, and the Tens had even invited her out to stay in Burnaby with them. Mrs Ten seems to think that she and Jeremy are a love affair waiting to blossom now, which is hilarious. She’s willing to play along if it makes life easier for Jeremy though. Her mom wouldn’t consider either option – BC because of the expense, which was totally fair, but the idea that Tanith was a bad influence was ridiculous. Just because she’s older doesn’t mean she’s going to lead Tessa astray. 

“I know you miss your friends, honey, but… Tanith’s in the corps now, she has older friends and I don’t know them, or what they’re going to be doing. I’m not trying to stop you from having fun, I just want to keep you safe.”

“I know.” 

“And I only get so much time with you, I miss you when you’re away at school.” 

Tessa walks over and puts her arms around her mom. “I miss you, too.” She’s rarely homesick anymore, but she still has her moments. “You look really pretty, Mom.” 

“You think so?” 

Tessa nods. She used to help her mom get ready all the time for date nights when she was little. She was probably more hindrance than help though. But date nights had gotten fewer and fewer as she grew up until her dad was gone. And he hadn’t come back after Tessa went to NBS and her mom had more free time, she’d been so stupid to ever think that he might. 

“I’d better get going if we’re going to make this reservation.” Her mom leans her head back so she can kiss Tessa’s cheek. 

They walk downstairs to where Joe is waiting in the living room. He stands up when her mom enters the room and kisses her hand, making some joke about her carriage awaiting. It’s gross, but also cute. 

“I think Scott is going out with his friends later, Tessa. Will you be okay here? I could ask him to stay or you could go along with them if you like?” Joe doesn’t seem to realise that Scott would probably rather die than have her tagging along.

“I’ll be fine, thanks.” Having the house to herself sounds like heaven. She can sit on the big, comfy couch and watch tv, or bring her book or her laptop down. Maybe Anna will still be up and able to message, she’s gone to Italy to visit family for the two-week break. Or Jordan, she thinks she’s in France this week. She’s jealous that her sister gets to spend the summer travelling Europe, and wishes she was here with her. She should text Tanith too, try and find a way to ask her about what she ate without making it seem like she’s checking up on her. 

“You have both our numbers in case you need anything, or anything happens?” God, she’s sixteen, not six.

“Yes, Mom. Now go have a nice time!” 

Her mom hugs her and she goes out to the door to wave them off. She heads back upstairs and puts in her earphones to drown out Scott’s Eminem. Anna is telling her about this cute guy who works at the gelato place near her nonna’s house when she hears a knock on her bedroom door. This is new.

Scott seems to be doing his best to avoid looking inside when she opens it. “I’m, uh, heading out now. I thought I should tell you.” Maybe it’s weird for him that Danny’s room now has lavender walls and pale pink sheets. Danny had been fine with it; he and Charlie had helped Joe paint. They were actually friendly and welcoming, unlike Scott. 

“I think I would have figured it out when the music stopped,” she says, mainly because she’s annoyed that he’s looking down at the carpet rather than at her face and apparently this makes her petty. 

“Um, yeah.” He puts his hands in his pockets. She thinks they might be new jeans, and hates herself for noticing that. “I might be back late, so I’ll lock up. You have your key if you need it?” 

She stops herself from whining that she’s not a child, because that would make her sound like one. “Yes. I’ll see you tomorrow then.” 

“Yeah,” he says, from halfway down the hall. 

She doesn’t know why she wants him to like her. He’ll never like her the way she likes him. But that’s a good thing. Tessa doesn’t want to have this stupid crush. She thought it would go away after they started living together, after those first few weeks when her mom gradually moved her things into this house and sold their London home. Maybe she doesn’t see him often enough for it go away when she’s only here on Saturday nights, maybe it will finally lift now that she’ll be seeing him for full weekends, and even full weeks in August when they’re both on vacation and he has a longer block of time with his dad. Him playing video games in the basement when she’s trying to practise at the barre that Joe put up for her will finally irritate her so much that she’ll forget how much she likes his eyes and wants to touch his hair. She won’t care about the confidence he has that makes her want to follow him and hang on every word he says. She won’t want to laugh at the stupid jokes he makes. She’ll see the way he chews on bottle caps as disgusting rather than weirdly mesmerising. He’ll just be her annoying step-brother, and it will be fine.

Anna needs to go to bed soon after they start chatting again, and after hearing so much about Italy Tessa wants to drink wine and eat gelato. There’s a bottle of pinot grigio in the fridge that her mom won’t miss a glass from, and she can make do with soft scoop vanilla. She gets into her pyjamas first, shorts and a tank top because it’s weirdly hot for June, and grabs _The Book Thief_ and heads downstairs. 

She curls up on the couch with her treats, and tries to ignore that the house being so quiet kind of freaks her out. The unease fades as she gets drawn into Liesel’s world, further and further as the light fades and her wine is left half-drunk on the coffee table. 

She’s so engrossed that she shrieks when all of a sudden she hears the front door open and it shakes her out of Molching. It can’t be her mom and Joe because she would have heard the car. 

“Tessa? Are you okay?” Scott comes into the living room and turns on the main light. She’d been reading by one of the small lamps. 

She inserts her bookmark and rubs her eyes a little, it’s so much brighter now. “Sorry. You surprised me.” 

He sits down beside her, which surprises her even more. “Are you drinking _wine_?”

Maybe she should have just used a normal glass, but the wine ones are so much classier. “What’s wrong with that?” She lifts it up and drains it before placing it back down on the coaster. 

“Your mom will be home soon, what if she saw?”

“I didn’t realise how late it was, I’m going to bed now anyway and _I_ always clean up after myself.” Sometimes it seems like Scott doesn’t know how to wash a dish. She doesn’t remember Casey and Kevin being this bad. 

“Should you be drinking at all?” 

Who does he think he is? “I had one glass. Weren’t you drinking with your friends?” 

“I only had a beer. And I’m older than you, you’re just a kid.” He won’t look straight at her, even when he’s arguing. 

“I am not just a kid!” 

He turns his head. “Your pyjamas have Minnie Mouse on them.” 

Her eyes track up from her legs to the shorts with mouse ears, and the cami with Minnie’s face on it. She thinks she can feel his eyes on her too, and it makes her breaths come harder. When she lifts her face his eyes are right on hers, and, oh, they look so much darker now than usual. 

It’s like the oxygen is leaking out of the room and her heart is beating in her ears, the world shrinking around them.

“I’m not a kid,” she says again, her voice shaking the tiniest amount. 

“Yeah, that’s…” He lays his head back on the couch. 

“That’s what?” she asks.

“That’s the problem.” It’s barely a murmur, but it trickles down her body. 

“Why’s it a problem?” Her words feel thick on her tongue.

He rolls his head to the side so that he’s facing her. “Tessa.” She wants to hear him say her name like that again, low and rough. “Don’t make me say it.” 

She lays her head beside his. “Say what?” She wants to hear it. 

Scott turns away from her and leans forward. “I should go. We shouldn’t do anything.”

He doesn’t make any move to go, so she inches closer, and reaches out to take his hand in hers. It’s like gravity, like she’s being drawn to him despite the part of her that knows this is stupid and reckless. His hand is so warm, and the perfect size to hold hers. He doesn’t let go. “We’re not doing anything,” she whispers. 

He shifts so that he’s directly facing her, their faces closer than they’ve ever been. “Do you want to do something, Tessa?” 

She nods, and he smooths his hand down her hair, his fingers burying in the ends. It only takes the slightest movement for her to place her lips on his. They’re so soft, and then his tongue on hers is sweeter than the wine, more decadent than the ice-cream, and as triumphant as the applause for a final curtain. Kissing has never felt this good before, makes her want to get as close to him as possible, to never have to stop. She shuffles nearer, putting her hand on the back of his head, his hair tickling her fingers. He leans his teeth down on her lips a little and she tightens her grip. His hand leaves her own hair and joins his other at her waist, pulling her onto his lap. 

He stops then, removes his lips from hers like he’s giving her an out, both of them breathing so hard. She kisses him again, firmer, her legs clenching around one of his. He clutches at her vest top, with how thin the material is he must definitely be able to feel her nipples against his t-shirt. Can he feel how wet she is through her shorts? It hadn’t been like when she’d kissed anyone before, even when she’d gone further. What if she leaves a stain on his jeans?

Tessa breaks the kiss and gets off his lap, but she can’t quite bring herself to let go completely, so she hangs on to his arm and puts her head on his shoulder.

Scott’s voice is urgent. “Are you okay, Tessa? I’m sorry, I…”

“I’m good. It was good, it was really, really good. I just…”

“Yeah. We should stop.” She hopes he doesn’t mean permanently. “They, um, they could home anytime.” 

She squeezes her eyes shut. She doesn’t want to think about their parents right now. 

Scott tucks some of her hair behind her ear and she opens her eyes. His hair is a mess, and the black of his pupils is overtaking the hazel in his eyes. She did that, and it makes her feel sort of… powerful? 

“You should go up to bed and I’ll wash up.” She widens her eyes at him. “I’ll go to my own bedroom on my own, where I’ll be alone. I don’t expect anything. Else. Ever.”

“I was just surprised you offered to clean up.” She shrugs, trying to appear nonchalant. 

He laughs. “I do help out sometimes.” 

“I hope you do more at home when it’s just you and your mom.” She blushes, she hadn’t really intended for that to come out, but it’s something she’s definitely thought about. 

“I do, I promise.” He wipes his thumb across her cheek. “You’re really beautiful.”

She almost gasps. She had never expected to hear that from him. “No, I’m not.” Pretty, sure, but not beautiful.

“Yes, you are,” he says firmly. And then more gently, “Can I kiss you?”

Tessa giggles, and hopes it doesn’t make her seem really immature. “Yes.” 

It’s just a short one, soft and sweet. “Do you… what do you want to do about this, Tessa?”

“I don’t…” She drags her teeth over her bottom lip. “I know this isn’t… the smartest idea. But I don’t… I have three siblings. I don’t need anymore. And if you want to do this again, I, um, I would like that.” A lot. 

“I’d like that. To do this again. And I definitely don’t see you as a sister, just so we’re clear.” It’s like he’s actually getting paler just thinking about it. 

“Good. It would be weird if you did even if we hadn’t…” They only met four months ago, they barely know one another. 

“I still can’t believe they got married on a cruise.” Scott shakes his head.

“I know.” Tessa starts to yawn when she opens her mouth wide to make the ‘o’ sound. 

“I did mean it when I said you should go to bed and that I’d clean up.” He kisses her again, so quick it barely registers. 

She lifts her book back up, clutching it to her chest. “I’ll, uh, see you in the morning.” 

“Yeah, see you then.” He’s fixing his hair as she leaves, and when she’s halfway up the stairs she hears him call out, “Sweet dreams, Tessa.” 

She feels all in a haze when she goes back into her room, like the world has been revolving in triple time since she left. She places her book on her bedside table and lies down, remembering what it had felt like to kiss Scott.

This time when she slips her hand under her shorts and touches herself she doesn’t feel guilty about imagining her fingers are Scott’s instead.


	3. I caught your fever, I'll be feeling it forever

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from [Fever](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uc_btaaPbGw)

_January 2015_

Scott drives home to Barrie in something of a daze after meeting Tessa. He’s glad the road is so familiar to him, or else he’d be in trouble. He hadn’t been expecting her at all. He’d been nervous enough about meeting Jordan on her own, never mind Tessa. He hasn’t exactly had much alone time with any of the Virtue siblings other than her that summer. The others were all that bit older than him, and he was never quite sure who knew what when about him and Tessa. He didn’t think Casey knew at all until the night of his wedding when Scott had gone up to congratulate him again before leaving and he’d put him in headlock, one that seemed joking to everyone else, and told him that if he ever found out Scott had done anything with Tessa that she hadn’t wanted he’d murder him. On the plus side, it was obvious that she had people looking out for her.

He keeps a wary eye on his phone throughout the drive and then through his evening coaching session, waiting for someone to read him the riot act. He’s surprised Charlie hasn’t texted to see how it went, he must be fully abdicating his responsibilities. Scott’s half-waiting on a message from Tessa too, but he figures she might need some time. She definitely hadn’t been anticipating seeing him. At least he got to have his moment of shock on seeing her in private, without her watching his reaction. Hers had only come when he’d gone up to the table. Seeing her go through a messy coughing fit while she looked ill already and still thinking she was the most beautiful person he’d ever seen had been a decent indication that he still wasn’t entirely over her. But he hadn’t really needed to see her in person to know that.

The call comes when he’s back at home, heating up leftover bolognese from the day before. It’s Charlie and not a Virtue, so he probably isn’t about to be threatened. He hopes.

“Scott!” Charlie barks as soon as he picks up. “Nothing happened at that lunch to organise the party that you thought I might want to hear about? Say, that it wasn’t Jordan you met?”

He wonders if his brother and Jordan are reconsidering whether they can keep this on after all. “I, uh, wanted to take some time to think it over myself before talking to you about it.” He’s been thinking about it all day, but he still isn’t all that ready to talk. What is there to say other than he doesn’t have a fucking clue how this is all going to go?

“Okay. That, uh, that makes sense. How was it?”

“It was… It went as well as it could have gone, I guess?” It had been awkward but polite, difficult, maybe, but not damaging. “We haven’t been alone together in almost ten years, so it was always going to be strange whenever that happened again.”

“That’s not what I heard.” His brother doesn’t sound impressed. “What about the time you spent in a cleaning supply closet at my wedding?”

Fuck Danny. “I told him that in confidence! And, honestly, I’m not entirely sure that actually happened. I had a lot to drink that night.” It’s perfectly possible he’d made the whole thing up.

“You spent that day not looking at each other, and then that night giving each other Romeo and Juliet eyes, so I’m going to lean towards thinking you did desecrate a room the size of a wardrobe in the Park Hotel.”

“If it happened, we just made out, so I don’t think that counts as a desecration.” His memories (or fantasy) might be kind of cloudy, but he’s sure of that. They’d both known they were too far gone to go any further.

“I really don’t want any details about my brother making out with my sister, thanks.”

“She isn’t your sister!” Scott rushes the words out. “Or… she’s not mine anyway.”

Charlie’s tone softens. “We know the two of you don’t think of each other like that. At all. Clearly. But… for me and Danny, that’s who Tessa is now. So, we’re going to be a little… weirded out by the two of you working on this together and what that could lead to.”

“What do you think is going to happen? That we can’t control ourselves around one another?” They’re adults now. “That planning an anniversary party is going to get us in a romantic mood? Tessa practically planned your wedding with Nicole and they didn’t run off together!” That’s when Tessa had got so close to all his family, the summer Charlie got married and she’d been home in Ilderton in pain with her compartment syndrome. It had been his first summer in Detroit and he’d been busy adjusting to the new training regime and trying to take care of Alex who’d had such a hard time leaving her family behind. When he’d come back for the wedding it had almost felt like Tessa was a Moir now.

Charlie chuckles. “I’m pretty sure Nicole would have if Tess had asked. But they didn’t exactly have the history you two do.”

“That’s what it is though - history.”

“Really? You can honestly tell me that you’ve completely moved on?”

It’s not that he’s been stuck pining over Tessa this whole time. He’s had relationships, some better than others, and he’s given them his all, or at least tried to. But no one has ever made him feel the way she had, and he thinks that maybe there will always be a tug there. “I don’t know if I can tell you that, but I hope she has.” It’s bad enough that one of them should have to feel like this.

“Scott, if you feel like this is going to be too hard, we can get a party planner or something. It’s not a big deal.”

“We’ll be fine.” He thinks of what Tessa had said earlier on the phone to her mom. “It might be good for us. We can plan this party together and learn how to be normal…” He just can’t bring himself to say step-siblings, even with a major emphasis on step.

“Okay,” Charlie says, sounding doubtful. “Let me know if you need anything.”

“Thanks, I will. Talk soon.”

Scott eats his pasta while looking at the highlights of last night’s game, trying not to think about whether Tessa is going to text. After he cleans up, he cracks and goes to look through her social media feeds. He does this every once in a while, not in a creepy way, just to see what she’s doing, to see if she’s happy. Not that you can really tell from 140-character messages or 640 pixels by 640 pixels photos.

She posted a new photo just an hour ago, of Tanith Belbin surrounded by wedding magazines. Scott is sometimes surprised by how many names or faces he can recognise – not just Jordan and Kate (and even his dad), but Tanith, and Anna who Tessa roomed with at NBS, and Jeremy whom she’d danced with that night of the spring showcase. Maybe he’s a little jealous that they all get to still be in her life.

He forwards the photo to Alex who loves the NBoC and will enjoy the news that Tessa is Tanith’s maid of honour. His phone starts vibrating almost immediately after the message sends.

“I’m coming over,” Alex says as a greeting. “You’re clearly moping if you’re checking out her Instagram.”

“You’re going to come all the way from Detroit?”

“I’m at home, duh. I came to study and I was going to surprise you in the morning at the rink. But I can’t concentrate so I’m going to go provide you with emotional support in your hour of need.”

“You’re only coming over here because Mitch is stuck in Winnipeg after that snowstorm.”

“Oh, one hundred percent,” Alex breezes. “But Mom wants to play Scrabble and I can’t handle more words right now, so I’ll go listen to you instead.”

“I’m touched,” Scott says, playing up the sarcasm.

“You’d better have M&Ms,” she tells him before hanging up.

He does, as always, and he also has her favourite soda, so he sets them up in the living room, picking out the brown M&Ms because Alex swears they don’t taste as good.  
  
She hugs him tight when he lets her in and the day starts to swing back a little towards normality.

“Was there anything in particular that set you off on a Tessa Virtue social media trawl?” Alex asks as she pulls off her toque and parka. “Just that time every few months?”

“It doesn’t happen that often,” he protests as they walk towards the living room.

“Believe me, it does. Tessa agrees with me.”

He freezes. “Tessa?” Does she know? Had he accidentally liked something?!

“Danny’s Tessa, obviously.”

He flops down on the couch. “Thank God. But, still, how do you know?”

“I lived with you for six years.” She hadn’t known about it for the whole time, however. Their living together had been one of the things Marina had played up to make it seem like they were the perfect picture of young love, when in reality it had all been about rent and Alex’s parents wanting her to live with someone they knew.

“I met her today,” he says, just as Alex takes a sip of her Fanta.

“You what?!” Some of the soda seems to have fizzed up through her nose. He’s making everyone choke on their drinks today. “By accident? On purpose?”

“Both, kind of?” She looks at him sceptically and he explains the situation. “So now I’m going to working on this with her for the next few weeks, and I don’t know how we’re going to handle it.”

“Does this mean I can finally meet her?” Alex’s eyes are bright.

“That’s your priority here? Not helping me sort through my feelings or whatever support you were offering earlier?”

Alex crosses her arms, head held high. “Um, you’ve been holding out on me for years. She is my favourite dancer, I deserve this.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure you must have met at Charlie and Nicole’s wedding.”

“So sue me for not being enough of a super fan to recognise a corps member who was out injured. I didn’t get to meet her at Danny’s when I wanted to.” She’s glaring at him accusingly.

“It’s not my fault your great-aunt died and the funeral was the same day!”

Alex sighs, grabbing a handful of M&Ms and dropping the stray brown ones into his waiting palm. “Muriel always was the worst.” She pops a red, then a green into her mouth. “Have you guys seriously only seen each other at family weddings?”

“Uh, mainly, yeah.” Charlie’s, Danny’s, Casey’s, she’d even been invited to his cousin Sheri’s. The only other time he’s seen her in person was at her nana’s funeral.

“Interesting. You met because of a wedding, you only ever meet at weddings, and now you’re planning an anniversary party to celebrate that original wedding.” She counts these moments on her fingers.

“Why is that interesting?”

“I think it’s clearly all leading to your own wedding,” she says, nodding sagely.

He doesn’t even let himself imagine. “Al, it’s way too early in the semester for exam crazy to have set in, don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’m studying for the LSATs, it’s exam crazy all the time now. Who let me do this while finishing off these stupid modules? I have to do group work! I hate group work!”

“You’re great at group work,” he reminds her. “You won a bunch of medals with group work.”

“I won those with a partner who pulled his own weight. And lifted mine.”

“You’re doing this because you like a challenge. And you know what you want, and how you’re going to get there. You can do this.” He squeezes her shoulder.

“Thanks.” She laughs, “Sorry for dragging us off on that tangent, I really was joking about the most important thing being my opportunity to meet her.”

“You could though, if you came to the party? My dad and Kate love you, they’d be happy to see you there. It’s on Valentine’s Day.”

“Oh, that’s sweet, but I’m going away with Mitch that weekend. We haven’t had that much time to ourselves recently with him travelling for Jackson and me studying and…”

“Okay,” Scott cuts her off. “I get the idea.” He’s known them both since they were pre-teens, it’s cute when they hold hands all the time but he doesn’t want any details that go beyond that.

Alex rolls her eyes. “So we can talk about you banging your step-sister when you were seventeen but my long-term relationship is off-limits?”

“Alexandra Jane!” Tessa’s middle name is Jane too, but whenever he’d called her by her full name his tone had been very different.

She grimaces, “Sorry, that wasn’t a great way of putting it. Your secret trysts then.”

“I never actually told you any details on those, just the basics. And I don’t mind hearing anything about your relationship that doesn’t involve, uh, weekend getaways and what you might do on them.”

“Yeah, skiing is a real salacious topic, Scott, best to avoid it.” She reaches for more M&Ms. “But, yeah, that’s fine. And I do really want to help you with your… situation.”

“I just wish I could know how things were going to go.” He doesn’t how to prepare himself for this. It’s not like training or coaching where he can go in with a plan and execute.

Alex pulls her legs up onto the couch so that she’s sitting cross-legged. “Okay, so what is the scenario with the worst outcome and what do you think is the best scenario?”

“Uh, the worst outcome would be that we can’t work together at all and the party is a disaster, or we have to hand it off to someone who’s already stressed at the last minute. And the best scenario would be that it goes great.”

“Didn’t know you were so committed to planning parties. Maybe you should be thinking about that instead of those job offers from Gadbois and the Cricket Club.” Alex raises her eyebrows at him. “The party is a secondary issue, the real question is what do you think those outcomes are for your relationship with Tessa?”

He doesn’t really have a relationship with Tessa right now, but he guesses that whatever happens during this process will change that, for a time at least. “Worst is that things would be somehow worse than they are now, that we wouldn’t even be able to be polite to one another. Best…” He takes some of the brown M&Ms, shoving them in his mouth while Alex taps her fingers waiting for him to finish. “I guess that we could be friends?”

“You’re sure that’s the best outcome you can come up with?” Her voice is soft now.

“It’s the best realistic one.” Yeah, of course there’s a part of him that thinks the best ending to this would be him and Tessa together again, for real this time. But that isn’t going to happen. “Our parents are still married, that’s not going to change.” And he wouldn’t want it to.

“Yeah, but… it’s a different circumstance now. You’re adults, you’re not living in the same house… Sure, some people might have things to say, but you and your families would know the truth of it.”

“She probably doesn’t want anything like that.” It’s been ten years, give or take.

“But it’s okay for you to admit to yourself that you would, as long as you’re not placing expectations on her. And I know you wouldn’t do that.”

Alex has a point. “Since when have you been the wise one?”

“Literally forever. Except that one time I thought Fedor actually wanted to just talk at that party.” She squishes up her face. “What a creep.”

Scott hadn’t liked Alex’s paler than pale face after backing away from the corner Fedor had her in, but he had enjoyed telling him just what would happen if he came within breathing distance of her again.

“Not having to see him again is truly one of the best things about being retired. That and all the junk food. Do you want chips?”

“Yes,” Alex replies immediately.

When he comes back in with a big bowl of Doritos Alex is smiling down at her phone, typing out a message.

“Mitch surviving out in frozen Manitoba?”

“He says hi. Your phone was buzzing while you were out.”

It’s a text from Tessa. “She messaged.”

Alex’s head snaps up. “Tessa? Open it! If you need help with sexting, I’ve got really good at it.”

“ALEX!”

“Sorry, sorry.”

He hopes she doesn’t notice the slight shake to his hand as he swipes at his phone. He reads it to himself first, and then aloud. “Hi Scott. It was good to see you today, I’m sorry about the surprise at the start! I was thinking that it might be a good idea if you look into the caterers and I take care of decorations. If you’re free next week we could meet to discuss a guest list? If not, we could call or email, whatever suits you best! I can send you on the details of the caterers I was researching if that’s okay with you. Hope you’re having a good evening. Tessa.”

Alex blinks several times. “Oh wow, she still likes you.”

“ _What_? How on earth did you come up with that?” These LSATs must really be getting to her.

“It was good to see you today? Hope you’re having a good evening?”

“Those are two incredibly banal statements. If that’s the type of thing Mitch is texting you it’s time for an evaluation of what constitutes romance for you two.”

She clicks her tongue. “That is not what Mitch is texting me. But Mitch is my boyfriend, not the person I had an intense forbidden love affair with and haven’t spoken to in a decade. Yes, those statements are banal, but they’re also completely unnecessary. She could have just told you what she wanted to do, not dressed it up with niceties and asking for your opinion.”

“Tessa’s just being polite.”

“She could have been polite and not said it was good to see you. I mean, it must have been awkward for her too. But she’s implying that she’s happy that it happened.”

“Or she could just be lying and it was actually awful?”

“Oh, just text her back and ask for those details. You’re worse than my sisters.” She stuffs some chips into her face, and after he’s started his message asks, “Do you feel okay about meeting her? Because it’s okay if you think it would be too difficult. She’s giving you an out.”

“If it’s okay with her it’s okay with me.”

Alex takes a breath. “If she didn’t want to meet you she would have just said to call or email and left it at that. Huh, that’s actually much better evidence for my theory than the other stuff.” She leans back on the couch. “Maybe I shouldn’t be a lawyer after all.”

“You’re going to be a kickass lawyer.” And that’s actually not a bad point at all. Not that it means Tessa _likes_ him, just that she’s clearly okay with meeting up. “How does this sound: Hi Tessa, it was good to see you too. I can take care of the catering side of things no problem, those details would be great, thanks. I’m in Toronto all day next Thursday anyway, so I could meet you in the evening if you’re free? If another day suits better I could do that either. I hope you had a good rehearsal.”

“Perfect. Send it.”

“Thanks.” He asks her about her classes and she’s just beginning to talk about a paper she has due in the next few weeks when his phone buzzes again.

“That was fast,” Alex says, and he can’t help but share that excitement that’s in her voice.

“Okay, so there are some links to some caterers around London, and then she says – Thank you so much! That’s perfect! I should be finished around five, I’m on the waterfront but I can travel to wherever you’ll be. Rehearsal was good, still early days yet. Did you have more coaching sessions this evening? I forgot to ask earlier.”

Alex puts her hand over her heart. “She’s initiating conversation. Oh my God, I can’t wait until I’m the best man at your wedding.”

“I don’t know how I put up with you sometimes.” Tessa had asked him a question though. She clearly did want to talk to him.

“Because you love me. What are you going to say?!”

“I can handle this myself, Alex.”

“Oh, that’s how it’s going to be now? Well, you text your girl, I’m going to pick out your outfit for your date next week.” She hops off the couch and starts walking down the hall. She knows where his bedroom is from when she and his mom had helped him decorate.

He follows her. “It’s not a date! And I can pick out my own clothes!”

“Mmhmmm, of course not. Just two pals planning a celebration of love together. And no, you can’t. It would be a dereliction of my duties as your skating partner to have you looking anything but your best when meeting up with the long-lost love of your life.”

There’s no arguing with her when she gets like this, so Scott works on his reply to Tessa while Alex rifles through his wardrobe. They’ve always made a good team.

Thursday comes around surprisingly quickly, he’s kept in contact with Tessa throughout the week, mainly discussing plans, but also what’s been happening in their lives. He’s still nervous to see her in person though. Maybe they’ll have run out of things to say by now, or he just won’t be able to actually talk when he sees her. He’s running a little late thanks to more traffic than he expected on the trip from the Cricket Club down to the waterfront.

It takes him a minute to find to her in the restaurant they’ve agreed to meet in. She’s sitting down at a counter to the side while Tanith stands beside her, holding a takeaway cup. Tanith is staring intently at her and then seems to rub her thumb under Tessa’s mouth.

She’s the first one to see him when he walks over. “Scott! It’s been so long. It’s so good of you to help Tessa out with this planning this party. What a nice way for the two of you to reconnect.”

His eyes widen at this, and he notices Tessa’s do the same. She’s not dressed in practice gear like Tanith is, but in a sweater, skirt, and knee-high boots. She has this pretty pale pink lipstick on that reminds him of one of her leotards from that summer. One he’d taken off her when she came home from dance class. But that’s really not what he should be thinking about right now.

“It’s good to see you, Tanith. How are you?”

“Great. Still dancing, getting married at the end of April, I couldn’t ask for anything else really. Tessa tells me that you’re coaching now? We all loved watching you and Alexandra last year. The whole company was rooting for you, Tessa especially.” Tessa looks up at her and Tanith smiles. “Anyway, I’d best be going, I hope you two have a good evening. If you haven’t eaten yet, Scott, they do some great pasta dishes here.” She leans over to hug Tessa and then waves goodbye to him.

He pulls out a stool beside Tessa and sits down, trying not to hit his knees off hers. “I’m sorry I’m a bit late, traffic was heavier than I expected.”

“Oh, don’t worry. You were at the Cricket Club, right? That’s where the Japanese guy… Yuzuru? That’s where he trains?”

Scott tries to swallow his smile at Yuzuru Hanyu being ‘the Japanese guy’ to Tessa. “Yeah, but I was there to see Tracy Wilson. They’re looking at expanding their dance programme and want to know if I’d be interested in coming onboard.”

Tessa smiles, and it makes his chest swell. “That’s great, Scott. Do you want to move from Barrie?”

“I love working there, but we kind of have enough coaches at the rink with my mom, and Dave, and Kelly, and then Dave’s son Mitch too. I’d like to have my own teams. I’ve got an offer in Montréal too, but Toronto is closer to my parents, and Charlie, and my friends.” It’s also the same city Tessa lives in, but that’s irrelevant.

“Who would you be working with in Montréal?” she asks.

“Marie-France Dubreuil and Patrice Lauzon. They were ice dancers…”

“They had that _Somewhere in Time_ programme! It was lovely, very romantic.”

“Yes, that’s them. They’re getting a lot of students now, so they could do with an extra set of hands.”

“Montréal is beautiful, but I have to say that I’m a little biased towards Toronto. Are you leaning in one direction or the other?” Tessa looks down and runs her finger along the rim of her coffee cup as she asks the question.

“Ontario is home, and I’d have more responsibilities, more control over the programme. But I’d learn a lot at Gadbois from Patch and Marie.” The next words kind of fly out of him, slightly reckless. “I’ve heard that Toronto is really sophisticated.”

Tessa’s cheeks go that pretty rosy red and she laughs, not the big one, but it sounds pretty great all the same. He’s missed her laugh. “Oh my God, did I really say that?”

“You definitely did. You weren’t the biggest fan of Ilderton back then.”

“I liked Ilderton fine!” He hasn’t heard that tone with its little edge from her in so long either. It’s like he’s finding fragments of her that match the way she was back then. Or she’s letting him in to who she is now. “I just… didn’t particularly want to move there.” She joins her hands together on her lap. “It’s funny, it feels more like home now than London.”

He’s happy that she can feel at home there. “Do you go back there often?” Is this treading dangerous ground? Talking about the place where it all happened? But the terrain is only going to get rockier when they have to actually go back together.

“When I’m not performing I try to get back a good bit.” Her voice drops a little. “I miss it when I’m gone too long.”

“Yeah.” He misses it too.

A waiter comes up to ask for his order and he asks for another minute. He hasn’t even glanced at the menu. “Are you okay with coffee, or would you like something to eat? I can wait and have something later if you think we’d get more done that way.”

“Oh, um, I could eat? I have stuff at home but it will keep until tomorrow. We might be here for a while anyway, it makes sense to eat now.” She seems to be avoiding looking at him, opening her menu and searching through the pages.

“Yeah, sure, sounds good.”

After they order the waiter sits them down at a table overlooking the water. “It’s pretty here,” Scott says.

“Yes, it’s a lovely area to get to work in. The Toronto Music Garden is just opposite the Walter Carsen Centre too.”

He asks Tessa about the ballet she’s rehearsing, a new work by David Wilson, and listens as she tells him the story. She asks about the kids he coaches, and he tells her all about them. He draws that big laugh from her when he says how sorry he feels for all his old coaches for having to put up with him. It isn’t awkward at all, it’s so incredibly easy. It feels natural, like it’s been no time at all since they talked like this. Maybe he can get that best outcome, maybe they can be friends. And maybe that will be enough.


	4. you are the only one that needs to know

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This chapter (and the following flashback chapters) contains scenes of a sexual nature between two teenagers over the age of consent but under the age of eighteen. It (as well as the following flashback chapters) also contain references to what may be disordered eating in a secondary character
> 
> Chapter title from [Dirty Little Secret](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPDcwjJ8pLg)

_June 2005_

Ever since Tessa kissed Scott last Saturday night, it’s been like her time is marked by a countdown from one kiss to the next. There had been two stolen kisses on the Sunday, a long one after she stretched in the basement and he’d come down to play video games, and a short one upstairs on the hall landing just before he left. Then five days until he’d returned on Friday. He seemed to arrive earlier than usual, but her mom had been home so they couldn’t do anything. Tessa had always loved how her mom took time off work in the last two weeks in June after the third term ended and before summer school, but it made it kind of difficult for her to secretly hook-up with her step-brother. 

They’d finally managed to get a moment alone last night after their parents went to bed and she’d gone down to the kitchen knowing that he was still downstairs. Scott lifted her up so that she was sitting on the table and she put her legs around his hips, drawing him in towards her. In between kisses he told her that he wanted her number so that he could text her because five days was too long without hearing from her, and then she’d put it into his phone while he kissed her neck. After a while she had felt him getting hard against her, and she had no idea what to do next. He moved back a little and she pulled him back to her. It felt good, she just hadn’t really felt ready to do anything else about it. And then there’d been a noise upstairs and Scott had run to the downstairs bathroom while she filled up a glass of water and went back to her room. 

But now the house is empty. Joe is at work and her mom is getting her hair dyed at her old salon in London and it’s just the two of them on the couch in the basement. Her lying down with him above her, bracketing her body with his. Making out with Scott is this mix of wanting to stay just like this forever, with his hands at her waist and hers on the hem of his t-shirt, and also wanting to keep going further and further, to feel more and more. She tips the scale a little further when she tugs off his t-shirt, her eyes widening at what she sees underneath.

“You have a six-pack?!” She reaches out to touch, her fingers feather-light.

Scott laughs, and she can feel the vibration. “I know I’m not competing right now, but I’m still an athlete. I do actually work out when I go the rink and the gym.”

“Oh, I can see that now.” She places her palm down, wanting to touch more, and as she runs her hand over his chest, she feels him contract and expand. “Are you still looking for a partner?” That had been a topic of conversation at one of those first awkward dinners right after their parents had got married.

“There’s not much point right now, most people who were looking found someone after Nationals, but that was when I went and broke my ankle. I had a try-out after I got my cast off, but…” He shrugs, “I don’t think there’s much point in skating with someone for a season just to be skating, I need to focus on working on my own skills and hopefully the right partner will come along.” 

“I think you must be good.” It sounds like that from the way his dad and brothers talk when he’s not around.

“You’ve never seen me skate, I could be terrible.” 

“Well, you seem to be putting in some effort anyway.” She moves her hand over his clavicle and down his arm. “And now that I know you better you seem a lot more focused than I thought.” 

He laughs again and she smiles, pleased. “Based on the way I focus on you?” He leans his head down to kiss her before she can answer. His thumbs dip under her shirt, stroking at her skin. “Can I?” he asks, his fingers gathering at the hem. She nods, and he raises it so slowly, to just above her belly button when he pauses. “ _Tessa Jane_ ,” his voice drips with something she hasn’t experienced, not really. “When did you get this done?” He starts rubbing the piercing, so softly.

“Um, two years ago?” Tanith had got hers done too, and that had been when her mom slightly soured on her. “Do you like it?” 

He puts his head down, and then his mouth is on the little bar and he’s tugging it with his teeth and then sucking. Her hips shoot off the couch and he lifts his head, moving his hands soothingly up her sides. “Is this okay?” 

“Yes. Please.” 

Scott grins, and then lowers his head again, swirling his tongue around her navel before kissing his way up her abs, lifting her t-shirt as he goes until her baby blue bra is revealed. He looks at her before taking her top off and she nods. 

“You’re gorgeous,” he says, before dragging his finger along the edge of the cup of her bra.

“I know they’re small.” The last guy who’d seen her like this had felt the need to tell her, as if she didn’t already know. 

“I think they’re great.” He sounds sure about it, and he certainly doesn’t look disappointed when he starts kissing the lacy material. Tessa has to clamp her legs together to stop herself from squirming too much.

Then the front door opens upstairs and they hear Joe calling Scott’s name and then hers. They both freeze at first before pulling on their t-shirts. There are footsteps above them and Tessa rolls off the couch and crawls around to crouch behind the end that faces away from the stairs. Scott turns on the tv and the familiar _Jeopardy!_ theme music plays. As she tucks her head in above her knees she thinks that maybe she should have just stayed there sitting beside him.

Joe opens the door and comes down the stairs. “Scott, did you eat earlier or do want some Chinese? Kate is bringing some home from London.”

“That sounds good, Dad.”

“Have you seen Tessa? I called her name too but didn’t get an answer.”

“Um, she went out for a walk a little while ago. She left her stuff by the back door.” She had left her ballet stuff there earlier. He’s good. “I can tell her when she comes back in.” 

“Thanks, son.” She hears Joe walking towards the stairs, and then stop. “You know, I really appreciate that you’ve been making more of an effort with her lately. I know this hasn’t been easy on either of you.”

“Uh, yeah. I… I judged her too quickly. She’s actually… nice.” Tessa bites her lip to stop herself from laughing.

“She’s a very sweet girl.” There’s so much warmth in Joe’s voice and it makes Tessa happy and sad in equal measure. How would he feel if he knew what she was doing with Scott? If her mom knew? 

Joe goes up the stairs and she waits a few seconds before getting up from her hiding place. She’d been planning on heading up after him as soon as she could, but Scott is gazing up at her with this understanding in his eyes and now all she wants is to be close to him. He lifts his arm and she settles in beside him, hooking her arms around his waist as he puts his around her. He turns up the volume. 

“That was close,” he whispers. She nods into his shoulder. “We can stop doing this, Tessa. I… We don’t need to risk things.”

“I think we probably should, but I don’t want to.” She’s not sure she could. She kisses him just above the neckline of his t-shirt. 

“Me either.” He rubs her arm. “We’ll just be more careful, okay?”

She turns her head a little bit and they watch Alex give contestants answers relating to NHL teams. “They can’t find out,” she says after they’ve got all the right questions between them. 

“Yeah. I know. It would… They wouldn’t understand.” 

“They’d think they were doing a bad job.” Her mom has worked so hard to make sure she’s happy, she can’t do that to her. 

“They won’t find out,” Scott states, like it’s a fact and not just a hope. 

“They won’t,” she echoes. Maybe if they say it often enough it will come true. 

 

They spend the next week texting one another. It’s not just about how much they want their hands on one another (though there is a lot of that). It’s him telling her about how one of the kids at the CanSkate class he helps out at finally started skating without someone to hold onto. It’s her telling him about going to a dance class at the school she’d started out at in London and seeing all her old teachers and friends. It’s him telling her that his mom is coming to Ilderton to stay with his aunt for the Canada Day weekend and her telling him that Tanith is coming to visit too. They won’t be seeing much of each other even when they’re in the same place, and their reaction to that is just to message more often. She tells him she’s eating Cheerios for breakfast and then feels so stupid until he texts back right away to say he’s having oatmeal. 

Scott gets there on Friday just before she has to go to London with her mom to pick Tanith up from the train station and she kisses him in the pantry for five minutes, neither of them saying a word. 

She’s excited that Tanith is coming to stay, of course she is, she just hadn’t really expected her to agree, or for her mom to issue the invitation in the first place. Her mom seems to be trying to make things up to her for not letting her stay in Toronto more, when it’s she who should be apologising for something her mom doesn’t even know about. 

Tanith doesn’t know either, and while that had felt fine in Toronto, it doesn’t feel as good now that she’s in Ilderton with her. She knows why she hasn’t told her - it’s not that she doesn’t trust her, it’s that she knows Tanith will tell her this is a bad idea and that she should end things. Tessa already knows all that. But she isn’t stopping. 

When Tanith asks her about what she’s been up to as they get changed and then make their way to the Ilderton Arena where they’re holding the Canada Day Fair, she just mentions the things she’s been doing with her mom, and that she’s been messaging Jordan and Anna a lot and looking forward to summer school. None of these things are lies, she’s just leaving out the main thing, or person, that’s been occupying her thoughts. 

She sees him almost as soon as they enter the grounds, even through all the crowds of people. It’s like she’s developed some kind of homing instinct. He’s with his friends and after he waves at her one of them whispers something in his ear and he elbows them. She doesn’t have much time to wonder about it because her phone buzzes two seconds later with a message from him saying that his friends are idiots and he hasn’t told them anything. 

“Is that Anna?” Tanith asks, lowering her sunglasses.

“Um, yeah, she just landed.” Tessa had actually received the text with that news an hour ago. 

“Tell her I say hi. What do you want to do?” 

Tessa puts her phone in the little red clutch she’s carrying and looks around. “Ferris wheel then food?” 

Tanith links their arms together and off they go. It’s a lot more enjoyable than Tessa had been anticipating, she’d been kind of nervous about dragging Tanith out here, but they have the most fun they’ve had in a long time. It’s so good to be outside under the sun. They talk, and they laugh, and they eat. Tanith a little less than Tessa but she still gets a snow cone when Tessa gets a small cotton candy, which makes Tessa smile. Until Tanith decides she doesn’t like it and throws it away.

Tessa sees Scott standing across from her and after he winks she licks her fingers, one by one. 

“What was that?” Tanith’s head jolts from Tessa to Scott and back. 

“What was what?” She tries to keep her voice calm.

“The licking your fingers while looking straight at your step-brother?!”

“I wasn’t looking straight at…”

“Tessa.” 

“It’s nothing. It’s just a harmless flirtation.” 

“A harmless flirtation? With the boy you live with? Whose dad is married to your mom?” It really doesn’t sound great laid out like that.

“He’s not… I barely ever see him. It’s not like we’re siblings.” 

Tanith’s voice is back to the gentle one Tessa is so used to, the one that had helped her through those first lonely months at NBS. “No one is expecting you to think of him as your brother. But… flirting with him… I just think it could end badly. What if… what if he wanted to take things further than you did?”

“Scott wouldn’t push me. He’s not like that, he’s a good guy.” Really and truly good.

Tanith frowns. “Has something happened already?”

“No,” Tessa says quickly. “Nothing’s happened.” 

“You wouldn’t lie to me, right?” 

Tessa doesn’t want to lie to her. She looks her straight in the eye and says, “Believe me when I say that everything is fine.” 

Tanith stares at her, like she’s trying to decide whether to challenge her on this, and then gives up. 

“Do you want some cotton candy?” Tessa more or less shoves the pink cloud into her face. 

“No, I’ve already eaten enough.” 

She hasn’t. “This is basically just air.”

“It’s pure sugar!” Tanith sounds angry and Tessa’s mouth falls, Tanith’s then too. “Oh, honey, it’s fine for you. You should eat what you like.”

“And why can’t you?” Tessa’s voice is so much smaller than usual. “You can still eat stuff like this too. Eating healthy doesn’t mean just fruit and vegetables all the time. Have you talked to the nutritionist recently?”

“I’m going to the bathroom.” She swings back and says, “Believe me when I say that everything is fine.” 

Tessa pulls her sunglasses down from the top of her head so that no one can see her eyes welling up. It’s barely a minute before Scott is standing in front of her.

“Tess, are you okay?” 

She wants to hug him, but she can’t. “Tanith kind of figured out that there was… something between us, but I said nothing had happened and she doesn’t believe me.” She can’t tell him the other part, the part that worries her more. It’s not hers to tell.

“You can tell people, I don’t want you to have to keep this a secret from everyone.”

“I know. I just don’t want to hear sensible reasons about why we shouldn’t be doing this.” She offers him the cotton candy, she’s lost her appetite. “Want some?” 

He grins, and the feel of it moves down her body. “I do.” He picks a piece off and licks his fingers like she had earlier and it leaves her biting her lip and then copying him. 

“What were your friends saying earlier?” 

Scott scowls, and it makes him look like a little kid. “Talking about how hot you were.”

“Me?!” She’s wearing a red floral dress and a white cardigan. She probably looks about twelve. 

He rolls his eyes. “Of course you. And then they started talking about what we could be getting up to.”

“The stuff we are getting up to?”

“No,” his neck reddens, “other stuff.” He kicks at the ground. “And it made me mad, because it didn’t sound like us. It sounded… dirty or something. Not, you know, in a good way.” 

She nods. “It’s not like that.” It’s not about him being her step-brother, it’s about him being Scott. 

“It’s not. It’s just you and me.” 

Tessa smiles at him, thinking about how he’s going to be even more tan after being out in the sun all day, when she sees his aunt Carol coming towards them.

“Hi Carol!” she waves. She’s met her a few times, in the store or when she calls in to see Scott some weekends. 

Scott turns around and starts laughing. “Tessa, that’s my mom.” 

The woman laughs too when she joins them and Tessa blushes. “Hi, I’m Tessa.” She shakes her hand. “I’m sorry, I knew you were twins, but… I guess I didn’t expect you to be so similar.” At least her embarrassment is distracting her from the fact she’s meeting the mom of the guy she’s… seeing?

“I’m Alma, honey. Don’t worry, it confuses a lot of people. How are you liking your first Canada Day in Ilderton?”

“It’s been great. My friend is here with me from Toronto and we’ve had a lot of fun.” She hopes Tanith comes back soon. 

“Look at you, singing Ilderton’s praises.” Scott whistles and she resists the urge to stick out her tongue at him.

“Oh, leave the poor girl alone, Scott. It is a great day, you’re right. I come back here every year.” 

“I mightn’t have always been so excited about Ilderton,” Tessa admits.

“Well, moving here must have been an adjustment. It was for everyone, I’m sure.” Alma’s eyes are like Scott’s, so warm and kind. “I hope this one didn’t give you too much grief over that.” She hits Scott’s chest and he grasps it like he’s dying or something.

“No, he was…”

“I was kind of awful.” Scott pushes his hair back, eyes on the ground.

“Neither of us were great. But things are much better now.” She’s just not going to mention why that is. “Scott came to see me dance in a show at school, that was really kind of him.” 

“Oh, I heard all about that! He said you were the best dancer he’d ever seen.”

Scott gives him mom a glare. 

“Really?” She wanted it to come out kind of teasing (normal teasing, not the kind of teasing they do when they’re alone), but it comes out tinged with how touched she is. 

He shrugs. “It’s the truth.” 

Tanith finally appears and when she reaches Tessa she squeezes her arm, and Tessa knows it’s an apology. “Tanith, you’ve met Scott, and this is his mom, Alma.”

They talk to Alma and Scott for a little bit longer until it’s time for the fireworks. She and Tanith head home straight after. They don’t talk much, just watch Tessa’s _Gilmore Girls_ DVDs on her laptop, but it feels better than earlier.

The next day is much of the same, she avoids looking at Scott and Tanith eats the same things she does. He texts her to check up on her and she replies when she’s away from her friend, like her relationship with Scott is becoming more secret and buried. Tanith asks her mom at dinner if Tessa can stay with her for her birthday the next weekend, and her mom agrees. Scott puts his hand on her knee underneath the table, and it feels like he’s telling her it’s okay that they won’t see each other then.

He tells her properly the next morning when he joins her in the basement after she goes down to stretch. He rests against the couch, watching her move through her warm-up, and says, “I’ll miss you, but I’m happy you get to spend time with your friends.”

She rests her right foot up on the barre, stretching her leg even though this isn’t even part of her normal routine. It gets his attention though. “Are you going to show me how much you’ll miss me?” 

Tessa puts her foot back on the ground and he comes over, wrapping her in close to him and leaning her back to the barre. “Do we have much time?” he whispers right into her ear, his hands roaming down over her top and skirt. 

“Tanith’s in the shower and Mom and Joe are reminiscing about Sicily.” 

He lifts her chin up and kisses her. “My mom isn’t coming for another hour, I have time too.”

“I like your mom,” she says, even though this might be a weird thing to bring up when his hand is tracking up her thigh.

“She likes you too. Although she did seem a bit worried that no one had told her how pretty you are.” He traces her lips.

“She doesn’t suspect anything?”

“No, I somehow managed to act like I hadn’t really noticed.” His hand is at the top of her leg now, his thumb rubbing circles into her inner thigh. He kisses her, with a little more purpose than usual, like he’s giving her something to remember him by.

“Please,” she says, her breath starting to catch. 

“Please what?”

“Touch me.” 

He cups her breast. “Like this?”

She grabs the hand under her skirt and leads him to the hem of her underwear, guiding him underneath. “Like this.” 

They both breathe in when his fingers slide down to where she’s waiting for him. “Fuck, you’re so wet,” he says. 

“I’m sorry.” Maybe he won’t like how his fingers will be all sticky.

His other hand leaves her chest and goes up to her cheek. “Why would you be sorry? You feel so good, babe.” He stops moving his middle finger. “Do you want to stop?”

“No, it feels…” Scott puts his thumb on her clit and she makes this little cry. “So good.”

“We need to be quiet, okay?” He covers his mouth with hers, kissing her deeply as he strokes around her entrance before gliding his finger in. She sighs into him, this feels so much better than when she does it herself. She feels him grin against her lips when she starts moving her hips. He moves his hand down from her face to her lower back. “Is this good, Tessa? Tell me what you want.” He grinds against her just a little, and he’s fully hard, his sweatpants rubbing on her bare leg. 

“More,” she murmurs. It hadn’t been like this at all with Jason, Anna’s friend from her old school who Tessa had dated for a little bit after they’d met at Anna’s birthday in February. He’d been the one to tell her she had small boobs, and when he’d touched her like this it had been like he was poking her and hoping for a good result, rather than exploring and reacting the way Scott is. 

She bites his lip as he does what she asks, moving with her in exactly the right way. It’s like time is suspended for a second and then she comes harder than she ever has before. It’s almost like in one of the romance novels she steals from her mom occasionally, like there are stars or something.

Scott doesn’t say anything, just rubs her back and places little kisses to her lips as she comes down. 

“That was… oh my God.”

“You liked it?” He looks so pleased and proud of himself. 

“Yes.” She reaches for his cock, stroking the soft cotton of his sweatpants. “Can I…” She doesn’t really know what to do, but she wants to try and make him feel good.

There’s a knock at the door. “Time to pack up, darling!” her mom calls. 

They both sigh in relief when they hear her walk away. “Next time?” she asks.

“Whatever you want to do,” Scott says, before kissing her. 

“Why does it have to be so long?” She wants it be just them, no interruptions. 

“It’s just eleven days. And I’ll text you.” He strokes her hair. “I could call too, if you liked.” 

“Yes.” She doesn’t know how she’ll keep this from Anna, but she wants to hear his voice. 

“Okay.” He lifts his fingers out from under her skirt and licks them clean. She grabs the barre with her right hand.

“Tessa! Are you done?” Her mom shouts down. 

She fixes her skirt, pecks Scott on the cheek, and runs up the stairs. 

Neither her mom or Tanith seem to notice how distracted she is on the journey to Toronto. Going back to NBS feels like coming home, but she still misses Scott. Dancing takes her mind off it, as does catching up with Anna and everyone else, but she wishes she could see him too. Tanith doesn’t bring it up again, but she eats two slices of cake at her birthday party which makes Tessa rest easier. Maybe she’s just paranoid. 

The calls from Scott are every second day at first, when Anna is out of the room or when Tessa can sneak away, but as the days go by they become a daily feature of her life. It’s not the same as having him, touching him, but it will have to be enough until she gets to see him again. 

 

_July 2005_

Scott’s had a countdown in his head for when he will see Tessa again ever since she left for summer school. It’s the longest he’s gone without kissing her since that first night nearly a month ago, and he feels itchy with it. Wants to just wrap her in his arms and not have to let go. But she’s going to be arriving home with her mom, and he’ll have to play it cool. She texts him throughout her trip, telling him how far away she is and informing him about her opinions on the new advertising billboards (she’s going to miss the Nicole Kidman Chanel No. 5 one). 

When she messages that she’s almost there he turns off his music and goes downstairs. He can’t greet her the way he wants to, but he can at least see her as soon as possible. The car drives up when he’s at the sink filling a glass of water and he pauses there while he watches her get out and grab her big floral travel bag (Vera Bradley, bought when she was visiting family in Michigan, she’d told him two weeks ago) from the trunk. She laughs at something her mom says and he wishes he could hear it. He wishes he could hear it all the time, loud and real, not just the quiet one she has to give him over the phone. 

Scott times his departure from the kitchen so that he just happens to be a little down the hall and naturally has to turn to see who’s there when the front door opens. Tessa comes in first, her mom behind, so while he can’t react, she can. Her eyes light up and she smiles the way she does when she talks about dancing. 

“Oh, hi Tessa. I didn’t know you were coming today.”

She rolls her eyes at him as her mom shuts the door. “We have full weekends off in July, no Saturday classes.”

He taps his foot, like he’s waiting to get out of having to make polite conversation. “Are you having a good time?” He keeps his voice somewhere between slightly bored and mildly interested. 

“Yeah, it’s good seeing everyone again, and it’s nice having full days of dance without academic classes too.” He knows almost every detail about what she’s been doing, like she knows about his life back in Barrie, helping out with summer camps and skating patterns on his own. 

“Cool.” He starts walking up the stairs. 

“How, uh, how was your drive?” Tessa asks. 

“Traffic-y. I’m really happy to be home.” The ‘with you’ has to go unsaid. 

Kate looks up from her phone, which she’d been smiling at. “Scott, your dad and I are going out for dinner tonight and then to the movies. Tessa told us we should see _Cinderella Man_ , she said it’s great.” Tessa is a genius. “I made that chicken à la king recipe you liked so there’s tonnes of food for you both, I can heat it up for you now if you want?”

“I can do it, Kate, thanks.” He walks back down the stairs. “Do you want some too, Tessa?” 

“Yes please. I can help once I’ve unpacked, I just want to shower first.” He didn’t need that visual at this very moment. 

Kate seems so pleased that they’re getting on well. “That’s so kind of you, Scott. You’re so good.” She squeezes his arm as he walks past her towards the kitchen.

The guilt pangs come then, that now familiar uncomfortable feeling in his stomach. Kate wouldn’t think he was good if she knew the reason he was so motivated to make dinner for himself and her daughter now was so that he could have more time touching said daughter later. 

Kate comes in to help him after getting changed and then Tessa comes down, her hair still wet. It leaves wet patches on the shoulders of her white NBS t-shirt and he tries not to stare at her as they eat dinner, her mom sitting with them until it’s time to go. Tessa tells her mom about summer school, and it’s mainly things he already knows, just with some more details about what exactly she’s been doing in class.

Tessa washes up after and he plays Snake on his phone in the living room until her mom leaves. He gives it a minute and then rushes to the kitchen, coming to a stop in the hall when he sees Tessa doing the same thing. The kiss he’s been waiting for isn’t as good as he’d been anticipating - they’re too keyed-up, it’s all teeth and tongue, and, while that can be fun, right now it just feels rushed. He buries his head in her wet hair, taking in the strong scent of strawberries. 

“We can go anywhere in the house now,” Tessa says.

“My bedroom?” he blurts out, before thinking that might be a little too far maybe. A bed has certain connotations, and he doesn’t think they’re quite ready to go the whole way yet. “Not for…” He moves back a little, but ends up ducking his head down because he feels kind of embarrassed. “I just like thinking about you on my sheets.” 

Tessa kisses him, and this is the one he wanted. It’s slower, more thorough, like they have all the time in the world. She steps away, taking his hands in hers and tugging. “Show me your room then.” 

They hurry up the stairs, and any worry he had about his room being messy is ended when Tessa says, “It’s so _tidy_ ,” sounding a little turned on.

“Not as much as my room back in Barrie, even though that one has more stuff.” He watches Tessa turn around in the centre of the room, considering his old, peeling Leafs posters and the ancient medals he’d won when he was small. “It’s weird. I moved so much stuff to Barrie to remind me of home, and now that room feels more like home.” 

Tessa kisses his cheek softly and then takes his hands again, backing herself towards his bed and lying down. Her hair fans out behind her and it looks even better than he’d fantasised it would. He kneels in between her legs, just looking down at her.

“If you take a picture it’ll last longer,” she jokes, those gorgeous eyes sparking. He thinks that she must be able to see him realise that he actually would like one. “Do you want to?”

“Uhhhhh, if that’s okay with you?”

Her cheeks are peony pink (at least, that’s what he thinks the flowers that the paramedic his mom is dating brought her are called). “Do you want me to take my top off?”

“Ummm, this is good?” He’ll take anything she’s comfortable with. 

“Do I have to… make a sexy face or something?” She pouts, and it looks sort of ridiculous. 

He takes his phone out from his back pocket. “Your smile is sexy. Or… you could just look at me, I don’t know.” 

She shuffles about. “I feel weird in photos by myself.”

Scott rests his left hand on her bare leg while opening the camera function. “Why did the chicken cross the road?”

“Why?”

“To get to the other side!”

She laughs, kind of like it’s against her better judgement, and he takes a bunch of pictures. “You’re such a dork.”

“You were the one who laughed at it.”

“Do you want any other poses?” she asks, arching her eyebrows and putting her hand against her forehead like an old movie star. 

“These are perfect.”

“You wanted me fully clothed and laughing, lying on your sheets? You’re very easily pleased.” 

“I love your laugh. And I wanted to see you here,” he swallows, “on my bed.” 

Her eyes get a little smokier. “I can take my top off.”

“I… What if someone saw them?”

“You already have photos of me lying on your bed, I think anyone who sees them is going to know this isn’t exactly a family relationship.” She squares her shoulders. “In for a penny, in for a pound, I guess.” She pulls off her t-shirt and settles back on the bed. Her bra is white and lacy and it along with her pale skin make such a contrast against his navy sheets. 

“You’re beautiful. The prettiest girl I’ve ever seen.”

Her cheeks go that pink colour again and he starts snapping. Once he puts his phone down, she says, quietly, “Do you want me to take my bra off too?”

His mouth goes dry. “I, um, if that’s… I don’t want you doing anything you don’t want to do.” 

She reaches back and unhooks the bra. “I want to.” He takes a deep breath and this and the rustling of her bra when she shrugs it down her shoulders are the only noises in the room.

“Is it okay if I…”

She reaches for his hand and places it over her left breast. It’s so soft, softer even than the other parts of her skin that he’s touched. Her nipples are standing up and he wonders if it’s cold with the window open. He feels hot all over. He rolls her nipple in between his thumb and his index finger and she makes this breathy little sigh. “That feels good.” 

“I love making you feel good.” 

“Take your photos, and then I want to try and make you feel good.” 

His hand is a little shaky lifting his hand off and down to pick his phone back up off the duvet. “Do you… Should I take the photo like this or do you want to touch them?” 

“It’s for you, Scott. You can decide.”

“But…” He frowns, thinking about the right way to say this. “It’s of you, it should be what you want.” 

“Well, I don’t really touch my boobs that often, unless…” She lowers her gaze. “Sometimes, when I’m touching myself…” Holy shit. “Do you want a picture of that?”

“ _Tess_.”

“Not anything graphic,” she rushes out. “Just…” She bites her lip and then nods, ever so slightly, before slipping her right hand under her shorts and putting her left one up to her breast. 

“This is… Um. I…” He can hear how wet she is. Her mouth makes this little ‘o’ shape and her eyes flutter shut and this is kind of, absolutely, blowing Scott’s mind. He leans back to take the photo and then puts his phone away. “What do you think about, when you do that?” he asks, his voice all gravel and rocks. 

“You.” She’s circling her wrist a little. “Even… even before we started.” He’s seriously considering pinching himself to check that this is real life. “Do you want to…”

He’s leaning in towards her, willing to do anything she might ask, when the front door crashes open and there are running footsteps. “Dad? Kate? I forgot to get the cookbook earlier!” It’s Charlie. “Scott? Tessa? Is anyone here?” They hear him bounding up the stairs. 

Scott and Tessa lock eyes. She scrambles off the bed, pulling on her t-shirt and throwing the pillow over the wet spot her hair has left, stuffing her bra in underneath. She flies over to sit at his desk, loudly saying, “And this is the music from Act Two,” before starting to play a classical piece on her phone. Scott just arranges himself on the bed so that he’s facing her.

Charlie appears at the doorway. “Scott? Tessa?” He seems very confused, and there’s this look of suspicion that makes Scott worry. 

“Oh, hey Charlie.” Tessa is remarkably composed. “I was just telling Scott about _La Bayadère_ , we were talking about it in class today.” 

“Uh, cool. Tess, do you know where your mom’s Delia Smith cookbook is? I promised Nicole I’d make her dinner, and I totally forgot to come by and collect it earlier.” 

“Sure, I’ll go get it now!” She pops off the seat and hurries away. 

Scott gets up to follow her downstairs but Charlie stops him with a hand to his shoulder. “Scott. What is going on? You and Tessa don’t hang out. Why…” He shuts his eyes. “Please tell me that there is nothing go on here.”

How would Danny react if he was the one being asked this? “What?! Are you crazy? She just came in to talk about school. She misses it when she’s here.”

He thinks there’s a little doubt in Charlie’s eyes, but then his brother shakes his head. “Yeah, I must be. Just… I know the door was open and all, but… How do you think Kate would feel about her daughter being in your bedroom with no one else in the house?” 

Scott slides his hand over his hair. “Uh, yeah, that’s a good point. I, um, guess I hadn’t really thought about that.” 

Charlie slaps him on the back. “It’s okay. But, you know, it could happen that Tessa might have a crush or something, and you’d have to be careful about that. I’m not saying she does!” His brother winks. “She probably knows she’s too good for you.”

“Yeah,” Scott laughs. “She has that right.” 

They go downstairs and find Tessa waiting for them with the cookbook. “Here you go! It’s so nice of you to do this, I hope it goes well.”

“Thanks, Tessa. You’re a star.” 

Charlie hurries away then. Scott waits until he can’t hear his car anymore before bundling Tessa into his arms. “I’m so, so sorry.”

She nestles into him, and it calms him right down. “It’s not your fault. We should have been smarter than leaving the door open, or going to your room. It’s right beside the stairs.”

“I was the one who wanted my room, and the photos.”

“Scott, we were always going to be doing something, it was just a matter of where and what.” She inclines her head upwards and kisses him. “I don’t regret it. But I am _really_ glad that Charlie didn’t come in on me masturbating in front of you because we would all have been scarred for life.” 

“Jesus, yeah. My room is out then.” 

“Good thing you got those pictures,” she grins, before tugging his hands like she had earlier. “To the basement?” 

“We don’t have to do anything. We could just watch a movie or whatever.”

Tessa sighs, like he’s being dumb. “We’re almost officially friends now in everyone’s eyes. We can watch movies anytime. I have engineered this opportunity for us to be alone together, and I intend to use it.” She frowns, “If you want to! It’s fine if you don’t.” 

He puts his hands on her waist and lifts her up, before carrying her over to the staircase. “I want to.”

“Are you going to lift me the whole way down?!” Her voice is a lot squeakier than normal.

“I’m an ice dancer, lifting girls is kind of my job.” 

“Not down a flight of stairs!” She’s wrapping her legs around him rather than trying to get down, so he thinks she’s not entirely opposed.

“I can handle ice and shoes with knives on them, some broad steps won’t be a problem.” He looks up at her to see if she’s sure, and after she nods, he heads down. There are more stairs than he’d ever noticed. That’s not a problem in terms of carrying Tessa, she’s used to being lifted and makes it easy for him, but in the fact that her being so tightly twined around him is causing him to get hard. 

All it takes for him to get fully hard is her grinding down on him as they make out when they finally get to the couch. She scoots back, resting her hands on the waistband of his sweatpants. “Can I?” He puts his hands over hers and helps her pull them down, and then she repeats the action with his boxers. 

Tessa moves back further and then kneels on the ground. He passes her a cushion and tries not to feel too self-conscious about how intently she’s staring at his cock. She nods, like she’s made a decision, and reaches for the elastic on her wrist, quickly tying her hair back. And then she licks him, long, and a little tentative.

“Fuck. Tess, are you… is this what you want to do?” He’d been expecting her to take him in her hand.

“Is it okay?” Is the most gorgeous girl he’s ever seen wanting to suck him off okay with him?

“It’s amazing.” 

She smiles, a little sheepish. “I, um, I haven’t done this before. So it might not be great.” 

Then she proceeds to take him in her mouth. And yeah, maybe he can tell that she hasn’t done this before from the way her touch is so light, or how she’s drumming her fingers on his knee, but somehow it’s even hotter because of that. Is that bad, that he’s getting even more turned on thinking about how he will always be the first guy she did this with? That’s he’s more excited by this than he had been when other girls had done this with him? The Russian girl with great English at Junior Worlds who he’d fingered unsuccessfully, both of them leaving the experience disappointed, not to mention his two exes. 

She switches to leaving these little kisses up and down him. “You’re incredible,” he tells her, voice ragged and near-wrecked. 

Her eyes are happy when she swallows around him again. His hips thrust before he can stop himself, he’s trying so hard not to overwhelm her, but she makes this humming noise when he does, as if she likes it, and the next thing he knows he’s coming into her mouth. It seems to be going on forever until she lets go, wiping her mouth with her hand and coughing.

Her eyes are a little red. “There’s water on the table,” he tells her. It’s a little stale, but he doesn’t think he can go get her anything fresh right now. 

She reaches back and drinks it quickly, coughing a little again. Scott pulls her up onto his lap, stroking her chin. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I just… didn’t expect quite so much.” 

“I, um, I was planning on pulling out, but…” He looks down, notices some of his come on her leg, and wipes at it with the back of his hand. “I’m sorry.” 

“I’m fine.” She kisses him on the nose and it makes him laugh a little.

“That was… one of the hottest things I’ve ever seen.” He continues before she can ask, “Along with you on my bed earlier, and your face two weeks ago when you came.” He wants to make her come again. “Could I… try that with you?” 

She blinks at him. “You want to?”

He does. So much that it surprises him. “Yeah.” He thinks of how she’d tasted on his fingers. “Fuck yeah.” 

Tessa laughs, and then he moves her so that she’s the one sitting on the couch. He pauses before kneeling down in front of her. “I tried this before and it didn’t work out, so I’m sorry if that happens with us.”

She lifts her hand to his face. “I don’t mind. We can do something else. I, um, it didn’t work out that well when I tried to give my ex a hand job. He said it was bad. That’s why I thought I should blow you instead.” She says all of this so matter-of-factly. 

“He what?” At least his ex had just said she didn’t think she wanted to try oral after all, not that it was bad. “He should have been thanking you for even wanting to touch him.”

“It was kind of bad though, I had no clue what I was doing.”

“He could have shown you how he liked it, I’m sure he knew how to get himself off like that.” 

Tessa snorts. “Yeah, he did it really quickly then.” 

He kisses her. “If I can’t get you off like this, I’ll do it with fingers. That worked last time.” 

She doesn’t say any words, but she hums her agreement. He unbuttons her shorts and pulls them and then her underwear down before kneeling on the cushion. He rubs circles around Tessa’s hips before pulling her closer to him, she spreads her legs a little wider and he thinks that she’s just as pretty here as everywhere else. He licks her up and over her folds and when she rolls her hips he’s confident that they’re both going to enjoy this. 

He likes how responsive she is when he kisses her clit, those strong thighs closing in around his head. He likes the sounds she makes when he swirls his tongue around her entrance before pushing inside. He likes the taste of her on his tongue, tangy and Tessa. He loves her hands in his hair, encouraging him as he replaces his tongue with his fingers and keeps his lips on her until she comes, his name a litany from her mouth to his ears. 

She’s still shaking when he sits back up on the couch and takes her into his arms. 

“That, uh, that worked out,” she tells him.

“For me too. It was awesome.” 

“You really liked it?” she asks, rubbing her thumb over his lips. 

He leans in to kiss her. “I really, really did.” She hugs him tight. “Will you be my girlfriend?” The words kind of fly out of him. “I mean, I know we can’t really tell people, but, yeah.”

“Yes.” She giggles, and it’s so fucking cute. “I’ll be your girlfriend.” She kisses him chastely on the cheek. “I… was kind of wondering about all of that. If we were exclusive? People were talking about it at school during the week, and I didn’t know how to bring it up.” She leans in close to his ear. “I only want to be with you.”

“I only want to be with you, too.” She’s everything. 

“Girlfriend definitely sounds better than step-sister.”

“Tess-aaa!” he whines. “Don’t kill the mood.” 

“We probably should, it’s getting late.” She kisses him again. “We can go upstairs and watch something in the living room, we can sit on opposite ends of the couch when we hear the car.” 

It’s a good plan, and it’s what they do after they fix up their clothes and tidy their hair. When their parents come home, they both comment on how nice it is that they’re spending time together. Scott avoids looking at Tessa and tries to ignore the feeling in his stomach and the taste of her still lingering on his tongue.


	5. stuck in my head, stuck on my heart, stuck on my body

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from [Run Away With Me](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OE2qEpkWWoQ)

_February 2015_

It takes until circa four a.m. on the thirteenth of February for Tessa to admit that she’s in way over her head. It only took three weeks of messaging Scott almost every day. It’s not just texting either, it’s his voice in her ear, tired and a little hoarse, sinking into her skin. She was so scared that it would be difficult and uncomfortable, but it’s been the very opposite. She thought he might hate her, but he doesn’t, or he’s at least too kind to let it show. Talking to him is once again the highlight of her days, even if it’s something utterly mundane like asking his opinion on what brand of flag bunting she should purchase. They talk about their lives too, the kids he coaches, the ballet she’s rehearsing. They don’t talk about their family, and come Saturday (tomorrow now), they’re going to be surrounded by them. She paces around her apartment for an hour until it comes to a time when she knows that Jordan will be up. There are some advantages to having an overworked junior associate as an elder sister. 

“Tess, you doing okay?” She can hear the crunch of Jordan eating her toast as she waits for her response.

“This was a bad idea. I can’t do this. I should pretend to be sick and not go to the party.” 

“What?! You’ve been saying that everything is going great! You said Scott was great to work with.” Her sister takes another bite. 

“Of course everything is going great! It’s just the two of us. The two of us was never the problem.” 

“Well, uh, that could be debatable.” She thinks Jordan is joking, but it’s so early.

“I mean, it’s fine when it’s just the two of us. It’s easy. But… we’re going back to Ilderton today. Together. I haven’t been in that house with him since…” She rubs her eyes. 

“Are you worried that something is going to happen?”

“No…” Maybe? “It’s more… What is everyone going to think when they see us together? Is it going to get really awkward again once you’re there, and all the guys? Like, we won’t be able to be ourselves anymore? And God, what are Mom and Joe going to think?” What if this ruins the anniversary for them?

“From what you’ve been telling me for the past few weeks, Mom and Joe are going to think that the two of you did a really good job of working together and organised a thoughtful, hopefully really fun, party for them.” Jordan pauses. “That’s the party. About the two of you… Everyone is going to be happy that you two are speaking like normal people. They just… might find it a bit weird if you’re… flirty? Have the two of you been flirting?” 

Have they? “I don’t think so?” She’d know if Scott was flirting with her, right? She feels like she’s all questions, no answers. 

“Do you want to be?”

“Want to be what?”

“Flirting, Tessa?”

She likes the original question better. She wants to just _be_ with Scott. Just the two of them being friends, and no one judging them for it, or watching them with hawk eyes. Just being their normal selves. 

And maybe, maybe other things too. Eating together in her apartment, not just in restaurants. His hand on her body not just when she nearly trips on a patch of ice outside a coffee shop, but whenever she wants. His lips on hers where she thinks they belong. 

Tessa is fucked, absolutely fucked. In every way except the one she wants to be. 

“Tessa?” her sister prompts, “Have you fallen asleep?”

“We can’t.” Her breaths are getting faster and she’s starting to feel clammy. “We can’t flirt with one another, and we can’t be together, we can’t.” 

Jordan waits while she slows her breathing, rubbing circles into her legs. “Why not, Tessa?”

Are the long hours getting to her? “Uh, last time I checked Mom and Joe were still married? That’s why we’re planning this party?” 

“It’s not like last time.” Jordan says it like it’s so simple. 

“We’re still, you know, step-siblings.” Tessa hisses the last word. She hates it, all sibilance with not much room for anything else in between.

“The two of you haven’t had a sibling-esque thought towards each other in your lives.” That’s true. “Just because you see Danny and Charlie that way doesn’t mean you have to feel the same way about Scott.”

“Isn’t that… weird though?” Is there something wrong with Tessa that she can accept Scott’s brothers as her own, and Joe as her dad in all but blood, and still want to do the least fraternal things in the world with him? 

“You’ve seen a lot more of them over the past ten years than you have Scott. And they were older, and treated you like a kid. It was never going to be like that with you and Scott.” Jordan sighs. “I know I didn’t handle that well.” She had been so judgemental about it when they were both at their nana’s at the end of that summer. “But now… It makes sense to me. You were two attractive teenagers who barely knew each other living in the same house. Had you even spent twelve nights under the one roof before you started seeing each other? It was more like a summer romance than anything else, you just… happened to have parents who were married.” 

Tessa’s eyes get blurry. “I nearly ruined Mom’s marriage. If she had ended it then, it would have been my fault.” 

“No, it wouldn’t.” Jordan’s voice is firm. “If it hadn’t worked out it would have been because she and Joe couldn’t deal with things, not because of your actions. Her marriage ending could never be your fault, Tessa. And, honestly, it’s ridiculous that they never had a conversation with you two about boundaries and what you should and shouldn’t be doing together.” 

“Well, they probably didn’t think we needed to be told not to do anything. It was obvious.” 

“And you were horny teenagers who they had landed in a house together because they couldn’t keep their own feelings in check.” It sounds like this is something Jordan has been holding in for a while. “I’m glad things worked out, I really, truly am. But looking back on it now… Getting married on a cruise to a guy she’d known for a week and whose kids she hadn’t met yet was not Mom’s finest hour as a parent. The rest of us were grown-up, but you weren’t. I know I acted like you sleeping with Scott was bad but… It wasn’t. It wasn’t well thought-out, or the mature way to deal with how the two of you were feeling, but you were teenagers. That’s what teenagers do.” 

“We knew we shouldn’t be doing it. We knew it was stupid.” 

“Tessa, if you’re still this caught up with him nearly ten years later, the way you felt about him wasn’t stupid, or silly, or fleeting. And if you think you might still feel that way, then you shouldn’t punish yourself for not handling it the best the first time around. You should just try and do it better this time.” 

“He might not feel the same.” For all she knows he is dating Alex Paul. She doesn’t think he is from the way he talks about her, but she doesn’t know how he talks about women he’s involved with, she just knows how he talked to her when they were together. 

“He might not,” Jordan agrees. “But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth a shot.” 

“I’m not ready to do anything yet.” Tessa needs some time to figure it out.

“That’s fine. That’s good. I’m sleeping in the room next to yours tomorrow, I don’t want to hear anything.

Tessa laughs, a little shocked. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Good. You’re feeling a bit better now, yeah?” Tessa nods, before remembering that Jordan can’t see her. “Get some rest, or some coffee, and have a safe trip to Ilderton. If you need anything just call, okay?” 

“Okay, I’m sorry for bothering you. Have a good day at work.” 

“Thanks. See you tomorrow, Tess.” 

Tessa has some breakfast, then stretches, and packs her car with decorations. And then she’s off to Ilderton. 

She’s on the 401 when she receives a call from Scott. “Hey Tess. You wanted me to remind you to bring the little figurines of European landmarks with you.” 

“I have them. I’ve actually already left Toronto, I was up early.” She’s not going to go into why. 

“I’m a little behind schedule. I have a surprise travel companion.” 

“Hi Tessa! This is Alexandra Paul! I’m a big fan!” Does Scott think he needs a buffer at home in Ilderton?

“She’s been complaining for years that I haven’t introduced you so she’s taking it upon herself to come meet you.” 

Before Tessa has a chance to say anything Alex launches into an effusive account of all the times she’s seen Tessa dance since she became a soloist. Tessa hopes she isn’t going to disappoint her when they meet in person. 

Just as Alex is getting into a detailed review of how much she loved Tessa’s Aurora Scott cuts her off. “Tessa probably wants to concentrate on driving, Al. You might be overwhelming her at this hour of the morning.” He lowers his voice, but Tessa can still catch what he’s saying. “You said you wanted me to stop you from freaking her out.” 

“If I get the weird fan stuff out of the way I can be normal when I meet her in person!” 

“So you want me to drive to Vancouver and back so you can get it all out of the way?” 

“You’re embarrassing me!” Alex raises her voice. “I’m sorry, Tessa, but we shall have to continue this conversation later. I’m going to kill my skating partner. I’d be happy to do whatever you need to help prepare for the party.” 

Tessa likes her. “That’s great. I’ll see you in Ilderton, Alex. Scott, it’s been nice knowing you.”

“You too, Tess.” His tone is more fond than teasing and it warms her up. 

She smiles the rest of the trip home. 

It’s weird to be back here knowing he’ll be here too. Every memory that she usually pushes down when she’s visiting is heightened as she moves around the house dusting the rooms they’ll be hosting people in for the party. They’re already spick and span, but her mom would die at the idea that the house hadn’t been cleaned first. After, as she unpacks her bag, she realises that in all her confusion this morning she forgot to take any of her potential outfits for the party with her, all she has are her pyjamas, some practice gear, and a casual top and jeans for Sunday. There’s no time to go back so she texts Jordan and asks her to go to her place and pick up some options on her way down tomorrow. 

The car pulls up just after she finishes freshening up, and while she’s felt nervous every time they’ve met up, it’s now like there are tiny birds rather than butterflies in her stomach. Scott and Alex are coming through the door as she reaches the bottom of the stairs, and her first thought is that they’re both even more attractive in person than they look on a screen (she knew this about Scott already, obviously. It just still makes her catch her breath each time).

“Hi!” Alex squeaks. “It’s so great to finally meet you! I mentioned I was a big fan earlier, right?”

“It’s really great to finally meet you, too. I’ve always been a big fan of yours. You’re a beautiful dancer.” 

Alex looks so excited by this compliment. She smacks Scott on the chest and he grimaces. “You never told me she was even prettier up close!” 

Scott goes bright red and grumbles, “I did. Multiple times.” 

Tessa finds herself blushing too. “I see you didn’t kill him after all.”

“Yeah, we’re doing SOI at least one more time this May, so I figured I should keep him around for that at least.” Alex goes pale. “I’m sorry, I really don’t usually talk this much around people I don’t know.” 

“I think the proximity to your idol is getting to you.” He pats Alex on the head, and then turns to Tessa. “It took her like a year before she said two words to me back when I moved to Barrie. But that might have been just because I was usually with Mitch and she couldn’t even say one word to him.”

“Well, I got over both issues, thankfully,” Alex says quickly. “Now, what can we do to help?” 

“Oh, Alex, you don’t have to…” She hadn’t even asked Scott if he wanted to invite her, she’s sure she’s not on the list. Is she Scott’s automatic plus one? “Will… I hope you’re joining us tomorrow.”

“I’d love to, but my boyfriend, Mitch,” she rolls her eyes a little, “is taking me on a trip. So this is my chance to make sure Joe and Kate have a good night.” 

Mitch is her boyfriend. Tessa worries that she’s smiling a bit more than is perhaps necessary. “That’s so sweet. Uh, I was thinking we should put up the larger decorations first, so the flags for outside, and then the prints for the rooms inside. I have Spanish, French, and Italian ones for the countries they visited on the cruise.” She doesn’t want to send Alex out in the cold, and she doesn’t particularly want to go out herself either. “Scott, could you do the outside ones and Alex and I can do the inside ones?” 

“Sure, I brought some tools from home in case Dad didn’t have the right ones.” 

Tessa is now rethinking her aversion to going outside, but it’s probably a little late. She can always look out the window. 

Alex offers to go up the stepladder and stick the prints up on the walls. “We can’t risk your legs.”

“What about yours?”

“Oh, I’m retired. I’m going skiing tomorrow, I can take those risks now.” 

Tessa laughs. “How long have you and your boyfriend been together?”

“Three and a half years,” Alex smiles. 

“Oh!” Tessa is a little embarrassed by the surprise that comes through in her voice.

“Marina thought it was best if Scott and I kept any romantic entanglements quiet so it wouldn’t mess with us being the image of young love. And neither of us are really in to the idea of making it a big deal on social media anyway.” 

“Did you and Scott ever…” She stops, she shouldn’t have said that. “I’m sorry, that’s none of my business.”

“No, it’s fine.” Alex turns around, sitting down on the top rung of the stepladder. “We kissed once. It was…” She pauses, and Tessa is apprehensive about what she might hear, “aggressively lacklustre.” Alex purses her lips. “I can’t even say it was mediocre, it was just _bad_. Like, no. He was all…” she shrugs, “and I was all,” she shrugs more dramatically, putting her hands in the air.

Tessa has this odd want to defend Scott. He’s an _excellent_ kisser, the best she’s ever had. But she probably shouldn’t say that.

“I mean, now I realise I think of him as my brother, so of course it wasn’t going to…” Alex’s voice trails off. Tessa wonders if she’s meant to chime in that she feels the same, when she definitely doesn’t, before she notices just how awkward Alex is. 

“You know,” she says simply.

“I think I’m the only person he’s ever told, apart from his brothers maybe.” Tessa thinks it might have been Joe or Alma doing the telling there. “And I’ve never told anyone.” Alex seems so upset over this. 

“I don’t mind that you know. It’s good that he has someone to talk to about it. I have two friends who know.” Tanith had already suspected, but she’d admitted everything to her after it all unravelled. And then Anna had wanted to know why Tessa was crying herself to sleep so often once they got back to school. 

“We had to do this sharing exercise as part of therapy, go away and tell each other something we’d never told anyone before. We had to learn to be vulnerable and trust one another again or something.” 

“You had some problems in your partnership?” Tessa feels like this is vaguely familiar, something that was hinted at maybe.

“Around the time we kissed actually. We were definitely a mess to have done that.” Alex rubs her knees. “It was after Vancouver and I think maybe we thought that if all these people thought we should be together that maybe they were right? And I was pining over Mitch even though he had a girlfriend, and Scott… Scott wasn’t in the best place right then. We’d been focused for so long on making that podium, and then it happened, and we weren’t sure what was next because I was injured and, well, I never liked competing that much anyway.” 

“Really? But you always seem so confident.”

Alex shakes her head. “I got better at hiding it, and I guess maybe I did like it towards the end, but it made me so anxious. I loved the process, but the actual competing was so scary. Scott loved it enough for both of us, and he was really good at making me feel…”

“Safe,” Tessa supplies.

“Yes, safe. He’s such a good partner.” Alex stands up and moves the ladder, taking the next print, an Art Deco style poster advertising Nice, and putting it up on the wall. “It’s funny, I was disappointed to be paired with him. After my partner and I split I thought they might put me with Mitch, but it was Scott. I guess it didn’t work out too badly.” 

“Olympic medals and a world title do seem a good return.” 

Alex steps down. “I just wish it could have been gold for him. Scott’s such an incredible skater, seems kind of crazy that he’s not an Olympic champion.”

“And not you?”

“He’s special. I’m good, but he’s something else. I feel guilty about retiring sometimes, but I was just done. And he doesn’t want to skate with anyone else.”

“He seems to love coaching though, he always liked helping out the younger kids.” She knows Scott, he wouldn’t want Alex blaming herself. 

“Yeah, he does. And it’s nice for him to be back in Ontario, closer to family and friends.” Alex looks up at Tessa, maybe emphasising the last word.

“Uh, yeah, it is. Should we move to Italy?” 

Alex widens her eyes, then laughs. “Oh, you mean in room decorations. I thought you were talking about you and Scott.” 

Tessa joins in with the laughter, trying not to think about the idea of her and Scott running off to Italy together. It’s a little too appealing. 

The front door opens. “All done!” Scott calls.

Tessa turns around and looks out the window, the flags are up along the drive and the bunting is hanging up too. She’d missed her chance to see Scott working with all the talking. “It looks great,” she tells him when he comes in, looking slightly sweaty. “Thank you so much.” 

Alex looks between back and forth between them, smiling. “Yes, great job, Scott. You should come help us with the Italian room now, I want to do as much to help you guys as I can before I have to get the train.”

She stays for another hour or so, asking Tessa questions about life at the National Ballet while Tessa asks her and Scott about their time training in Detroit. Alex is especially curious about costumes and costume fittings. Scott’s eyes seem to glaze over at that point. When Tessa asks them about their own costume process she gets a little distracted by images of Scott in fittings, and of the costumes she’s seen him wear.

Tessa hugs Alex when it’s time for Scott to take her to the train station in London. “You should come to _The Awakening_ , the new David Wilson ballet, if you have enough time from school next month. I’ll get you good tickets, you could bring Mitch. And, uh, Scott could come too.” She raises her eyes to meet his nervously. “If you want.” 

He’s looking at her all soft and serious. “I’d love to.” 

She smiles and squeezes Alex before letting her go. Alex looks immensely pleased with herself as she leaves. Tessa busies herself with putting up some photos of her mom and Joe throughout their marriage while she waits for Scott to return. Decorating has taken much less time than she expected, they could easily have come down early tomorrow morning and done it. Then she wouldn’t have had to sleep down the hall from him in a house that’s empty apart from them. That is if she sleeps at all.

She’s trying to decide where the best place to put the photos of her mom and Joe with their granddaughters is when the car pulls up. She’s confused when the doorbell rings, but figures that Scott must have forgotten his key. Until she opens the door to find Tanith holding a garment bag, with Charlie standing behind her.

“Wh-what?” 

“Good to see you too, Tess,” Tanith grins. She rattles the garment bag. “A little birdie told me you needed some clothes for tomorrow, and I knew you’d want to have that planned out in advance and not have to rush your decision. I thought it was the exact kind of circumstance you gave me a spare key for.” 

She’s a little surprised that Jordan and Tanith were talking, they’ve never become as friendly as she maybe expected or wanted them to be. “You didn’t have to come all this way, thank you both so much.” 

“It’s no problem, Tessa,” Charlie says. “It’s not too far out of our way from my family’s place on Lake Erie, and I’m pretty sure Tanith is more excited about helping you pick out an outfit than more time with my folks.”

“That’s…” Tanith start to protest, before changing her mind, “that’s maybe a little bit true.” 

“Thank you.” Tessa reaches out and hugs her.

Scott’s car comes up the drive then and Tessa has Tanith and Charlie come in so that they’re not all crowding the doorway. 

Tanith is the one to greet him when he enters. “Hi Scott! I’m sorry to interrupt your preparations, Jordan called to tell me that Tessa hadn’t brought her party clothes for tomorrow so I’m just here to drop them off! I couldn’t have her going to the party naked!”

Scott coughs. “No… that would be, uh, cold.” 

“This is Tanith’s fiancé, Charlie,” Tessa says, nudging Tanith in the back. 

“It’s good to meet you.” Scott shakes Charlie’s hand.

“You too. I’m a fan, I used to skate myself.” 

“Oh, thank you. You just missed Alex, she was helping out with decorating earlier. We’re actually almost done.”

“We were going to order some food, do you guys want to stay?” Tessa asks. 

“Do we have time?” Tanith asks Charlie. After he nods, she turns to Tessa, “Is that really good pizza place still open?” 

“Yes, they’re catering for us tomorrow. One of the companies anyway.”

“Don’t mention the war,” Scott says drily. 

Charlie frowns. “You had some trouble?” 

“Scott had to deal with it all, he saved the day. If the party is a success it’s all down to him really.” Tanith’s eyebrows seem to rise further the more that Tessa talks.

“Uh, he can start telling you about it, I’ll go order.”

It’s after she’s made the phone call that she thinks she should probably have checked if Scott’s opinion on pizza was still ‘anything goes’.

They’ve moved from the hall to the kitchen when she rejoins them, and Scott is pouring Tanith a glass of wine. He holds the bottle and an empty glass up while raising his eyebrows at Tessa and she nods. He’s obviously already covered the issue of having to find a new patisserie to provide the desserts after the first refused to be involved in a party held on Valentine’s Day even if it wasn’t specifically for that event, and has moved on to the apparent enmity between the local Italian and Spanish restaurants. 

“Carlotta, the daughter of the people who own Sagrada’s, calls me up and tells me that she heard from the people at La Boulangerie that we had Café Andaluz catering for us as well. And I said yeah, and explained about the cruise and how we wanted food from the places Dad and Kate had visited. And Carlotta goes on this tirade about how Carmen, who runs the Spanish place, has never even been to Spain and probably has no authentic Spanish heritage, and that she’s a liar and not to be trusted and that she won’t work with her. Naturally, I’m a little worried that this Carmen is going to flake on us or something so I do some asking around and people only have good things to say about her. I had to lie to Carlotta and pretend that their lasagne held special emotional significance to my dad and Kate to get her to agree to continue catering the party.”

“It is a great lasagne,” Tessa says. 

“Planning parties is hard, man. But just wait until you have to plan a wedding.” Charlie looks a little dead behind the eyes. 

“Yours is at the end of April, right?”

“Great memory, Scott.” Tanith nods at Tessa approvingly. “The 25th.”

“How long have the two of you been together?” 

“Since the fall of 2009,” Charlie says. “It was Tessa who set us up. After Jordan set me up with her.” 

“What?” Scott looks back and forth between the three of them.

“Jordan went to law school with Charlie, and she thought we’d get on well and it would take my mind off my surgery. And we went out and had a nice time, but there was just no…”

“Spark,” Charlie adds.

“Exactly. And as he was talking I kept thinking how much Tanith would like him, and then I called her and had her come meet him while I took my dessert to go. And now they’re getting married!”

“Tessa is an excellent matchmaker. She set Anna up with her fiancé too.” Tanith has the voice she uses for when she’s trying to persuade donors to provide more support for the ballet. 

“That’s not really true. They were already heading that direction, I just gave Anna the extra push.” Tessa had been hearing about the new Czech dancer at the Dutch National Ballet for months before she met him when visiting Anna in Amsterdam. “They were worried about messing up their working relationship. She had to decide if it was worth the risk.” To Tessa it had seemed that a job was always replaceable. 

Tanith sighs. “We just need to find the right person for Tessa to take a risk on. And someone to give her a push.”

Tessa is very thankful that the pizza arrives then and she can give Tanith a dirty look without Scott noticing. “That was so subtle.” 

“I thought it was good! I was working on things to say in the car, wasn’t I, babe?” 

Charlie shrugs apologetically. “That really is one of the better ones.” 

“Please behave during dinner?” 

Tanith nods like it pains her, but she does manage not to say anything about Tessa’s love life, or lack thereof, during the meal. After they finish eating, she suggests that she and Tessa go upstairs to select an outfit for the party. 

“So what do you think?” Tessa asks once they close the door to her bedroom. 

“About what?” Tanith is all innocence now. 

“About me and Scott.” 

“Well,” Tanith clicks her tongue as she unzips the garment bag, “I think it probably will be a little bit awkward when Joe walks you down the aisle to his son.”

“Tanith! I was being serious!” Tessa sits down on her bed. “And don’t know if I want to be walked down the aisle by anyone.” 

“You said you’d like Joe to do it, that night you were tipsy and got all weepy about my dad walking down with me. Which, incidentally, was the day you met Scott again.” 

Tessa does like the idea of Joe, warm and kind and dependable, being at her side if she were ever to take that step. But the person waiting for her at the end of the aisle is faceless. It would be wrong to imagine anything else. 

“What dresses did you bring?” she asks finally.

“I have a few good options,” Tanith begins, before unveiling her first.

“Is this a joke?!” 

“It’s a great dress! You got so many compliments on it at that gala!” 

“It’s not a great dress for a family party! People… people will think I’m either sleeping with Scott, or trying to!” 

“Well, I was aiming for Scott getting the idea that you want to sleep with him, but I guess other people might pick up on that, too.” Tanith fixes the black dress on its hanger. “I don’t think it’s inappropriate, it’s knee-length and has full sleeves!”

“Those sleeves are mesh, as are the cut-outs to the side and down the front!” There is definite side-boob sighting potential. “And it has a slit!” A small one, but still. This party starts at four in the evening. 

Tanith hangs it up in Tessa’s wardrobe. “I’m guessing this one won’t work either?” 

Tessa just shakes her head when she sees the short, off the shoulder, black velvet dress. She seriously considers the next choice of a long-sleeved, white lacy dress that reaches a little above her knees, but both she and Tanith think it might be a bit too summery. 

“That’s perfect,” Tessa says the minute Tanith pulls the next dress out of the bag. The tag had described its colour as champagne gold and she’s always thought it shimmers like both those things. It’s sleeveless, with a high neck, cinching in at her waist and then flowing out in a full skirt that grazes the tops of her knees. 

“I always knew it would be this one, just brought the others for fun really. I have the right shoes, and I brought some jewellery for you to choose from too.” 

“You really are the best.”

“Even when I’m teasing you about Scott?” Tanith sits down beside her.

“Even then.” 

“What do _you_ think about that?” It’s clear she’s finished with joking around.

Tessa exhales, and lies down on the bed, on the sheets that are the same colour as the ones he’d lain on beside her. “I like him,” she whispers. “I really, really like him.” It’s the way she’d have talked about him back then, if things hadn’t been so complicated and she could just gush about him the way she’d wanted to, about how hot he was, but still so sweet and caring. 

Tanith lies down too. “I know you do, honey. But what do you want to do about that?”

“Do you think he likes me too?” It’s a childish question, but she wants an outsider’s opinion. Or as much of an outside as Tanith can be.

“I do. But do you?”

Tessa thinks of the way he looks at her, soft and patient, and the way he sometimes has to look away. And more than that she thinks about how when they look at each other it’s like nothing else really matters, like it’s just the two of them drawing ever closer. 

“Yeah, I think he does.” She knows it. 

“Okay. And are you ready to explore that possibility?”

“I… Not quite yet. I think I’m worried that this is just us being in close proximity again, the intensity of that? If we were to go there again, I’d want to be sure we went about it in the right way.” 

“I think that’s good.” Tanith reaches for her hand. “I don’t think your relationship back then was a mistake, but I think that the way you went about it might have been. If you’re doing this properly, you’re going to need to tell your family early on. Even if you think it’s a good idea, the longer you go without telling them the harder it will be.”

“I’m not ready to talk to my mom about it yet.” 

“I get that. This weekend mightn’t be the right time.” 

“I don’t think she’d appreciate me taking her aside at her anniversary party to tell her I still want to bang my step-brother.” They both laugh, so much that the bed starts to shake. And then Tessa’s voice gets caught in her throat. “I don’t want to make things hard for anyone.” 

Tanith squeezes her hand. “I know. But I think it’s been hard for you and Scott for a long time now, and if you have a chance to fix that, I think you should take it. Maybe… take a little time apart. Still keep in touch, but don’t see each other, and then, after some space, you’ll know if this is something you really want or if it was just being carried away with spending time together again.” 

Tessa squeezes back. “That’s a good plan.” 

“I do have some from time to time,” Tanith says lightly. “But right now I should probably be planning to get on the road.” 

They get up off the bed and Tessa hugs her tightly before they go downstairs. Tanith and Charlie leave with waves and a promise from Scott to catch a game together some time.

“Charlie seems like a good guy,” he says as they drive away.

“He is,” she confirms. “They’re good together.” Tessa closes the door and it sinks in that this is the first time they’ve been alone all day. “Do you want to finish off that bottle of wine?” 

“Uh, yeah, sure. It’s not like we don’t have enough for the party tomorrow.” 

She laughs. “Definitely not.” 

He follows her into the kitchen and watches her as she pours out the wine, drumming his fingers on the counter. “Do you want to stay in here or, uh…”

“The living room?” she suggests. He takes the bottle with them. 

They sit on opposite ends of the couch. “We got so much done today!” She lays on the enthusiasm a little too thick.

“We did. The place is looking really good.” 

“Alex was such a good help.” She sips her wine. “I really like her.” 

“She _loves_ you, didn’t talk about anything else the whole journey to London.” The way he says it makes Tessa suspect Alex actually did talk about something else. 

“I told you back then that you’d find a good partner.” 

“Yeah, you did,” he says, surprised. They haven’t really referenced that time these past few weeks, just focused completely on the present, and the parts of the last few years they’d missed in each other’s lives. 

“I was really nervous about today,” she confesses. “About the two of us being back here.” 

“Me too. I’m still pretty nervous about tomorrow.” He leans the side of his head against the back of the couch. She loves that little curl that’s resting on his forehead.

She mirrors him. “They’re all going to be there.”

“It’s easy when it’s just the two of us.” 

A smile tugs at the sides of her mouth thanks to how similar that is to what she had said to Jordan earlier. “It is. We can just be ourselves, not worrying about what they’re thinking about – wondering what we did, or are doing,” she takes a deep breath, “or will do.” 

His eyes widen a little at that. “Yeah.” 

Her phone buzzes. “Oh, it’s my mom. They’ve landed and are going to Jordan’s now. She’s looking forward to the dinner tomorrow and hopes I’m not worrying about seeing you.” She starts typing a reply and then looks back up at Scott. “Is it better to lie and say I’m looking forward to seeing all their photos or just not mention it?”

He laughs. “Well, if you’re like me, it’s not so much looking at the photos that you mind as much as the volume of them.” 

“So many! And multiple sunset ones from every night!”

“Do you think Dad proposed at sunset or something?” 

“Maybe. They’ve always been cagey with details about how it all happened.” She’s willing to bet that she and Scott are wearing matching expressions of discomfort.

“I’m still surprised by it. They’re just… not the people you expect to get married after knowing each other a week.”

“Did I ever tell you that I asked if it was a shotgun wedding when she told me?”

“No!” He reaches for the bottle and divides the remaining wine between their glasses.

“She was confused that I thought she could have known by then and got really worried about the education I was receiving at NBS. I think I still half-expected there to be a baby for the next few months, even though she told me that wasn’t going to happen.” 

“I can’t say that I mind not having a half-sibling.” 

Tessa draws her legs up, resting her chin on her knees. “It would have made things weirder.” She can’t imagine that she and Scott would have started something if her mom was pregnant with their shared sibling. And then she looks at him and reconsiders. Thinking back to that summer she can’t see a situation in which she wouldn’t have been attracted to him, wouldn’t have ended up kissing him here in this room. She runs her finger down one of the lines on the cushion beside her. “They changed the couch.”

He drains his wine. “They did.” 

“The old one was comfy. I miss it.” It might be for the best that it’s gone, however. 

“I miss it, too.” 

She finishes her own wine and then yawns. “I should go to bed, I didn’t sleep much last night.” 

He furrows his brows, he’s always been so concerned with taking care of her. “You go on up, I can clean.” 

Tessa sidles closer so that she can hand him her glass. “You’re good at that now?”

“I try.” He grins, and then they both freeze when their hands brush as he takes the glass. It’s the slightest touch, but it makes her heart beat so loudly that she doesn’t know how he can’t hear it. 

It doesn’t have to be the tiniest graze of hands. It could be the press of her lips against his, and the pull of his body towards hers. It doesn’t have to be a spark. It could be a fire. It doesn’t have to be a promise. It could be a culmination. A consummation. 

But Tessa knows that she must wait. After all, they have a party to throw tomorrow, and she knows that if she kisses Scott now there’s no way she’s letting him go within the next twenty-four hours. They would barely leave her room. It might be hard to organise things from there, so better to postpone. 

She stands up and tells him that she’ll see him in the morning. When she’s halfway up the stairs, she calls, “Sweet dreams, Scott.”

Sleep comes a lot easier than expected. 

The orgasm she gives herself with his name on her tongue helps.


	6. let my love adorn you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This chapter (and the following flashback chapters) contains scenes of a sexual nature between two teenagers over the age of consent but under the age of eighteen. It (as well as the following flashback chapters) also contain references to what may be disordered eating in a secondary character.
> 
> Chapter title from [Adorn](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dM5QYdTo08) (thus breaking the naming pattern I was using that no one else cared about)

_July 2005_

Pretending that he’s not ecstatic when Kate calls him to ask if he can pick up Tessa from the train station might be the greatest acting Scott has ever done. And he’s been acting like he’s not into her for months now, there is serious competition. He tells Kate that he doesn’t mind doing it, but hopefully he sells the fake resentment at having to go out of his way on his drive home. She’s about to head in to an emergency meeting so he offers to be the one to let Tessa know about the new arrangement. He wants to surprise her. The shine is kind of taken off the moment by how grateful Kate is, saying over and over again how helpful he’s being. It makes him feel like he’s taking advantage of her trust in him. But then he gets a message from Tessa about how she can’t wait to see him and all he can think of is her.

He arrives at the station a little before her train is due in, so he wanders around a little. He considers buying her flowers, but then she’d have to explain where she got them, and there’s always the chance that someone they know could see them.

When the arrival of the train is announced he goes to the area beside the gates and waits. He isn’t expecting her face to fall when she sees him. She doesn’t really look herself either, paler than usual and wearing the leggings she sometimes practises in, paired with what he now knows is one of her ‘nice’ tops.

“Are you okay?” he asks when she reaches him.

She’s trying to put on a smile, but it’s not quite working. “Sorry, I wasn’t expecting you. I just… kind of wanted my mom right now.”

“She had a meeting, but she should be home by six she said. Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Could you carry my bag?” Shit, he should have been doing that already. “My back is sore.”

“Did you get injured? Do you need to see a doctor?”

Tessa shakes her head. “No, nothing like that.”

They’re silent as they make their way out of the train station and towards his car. There’s no one around when he says, “Maybe I can make you feel better later.”

“There won’t be any of that this weekend.” She’s pouting now.

“That’s fine! We don’t have to do anything.” Has she changed her mind?

“I want to do things.” She crosses her arms over her chest and her eyes start getting teary. “But I started my period early, and it hurts, and it hasn’t been like this since I started the pill, and I don’t have any painkillers, and I had to get changed in a disgusting train bathroom, and I look like a mess, and now I’m freaking you out by talking about my period and I’ve ruined our weekend and…”

He pulls her into his arms. “Tessa, baby, please don’t cry. You haven’t ruined anything, and I’m not freaked out. I know all about what periods are like from skating with Alice, I had to know because she always had a sore back then, too.” He’s not going to share that he wasn’t great about talking about that for the first few months, he doesn’t want to disappoint her. “You get in the car and I’ll go get you some painkillers. Is Tylenol okay or do you need something stronger?”

“Maybe Advil? Ibuprofen is better I think. We have stronger stuff at home if I need it.” She’s sniffling into his neck. He strokes her hair.

He opens the door to his jeep and helps her step up into it. “I’ll be back soon,” he tells her before kissing her cheek.

It’s not only Advil he buys in the nearest pharmacy he can find, but a bunch of bars of Lindt and a teddy bear that heats up in the microwave. Heat is meant to help he thinks, and Tessa likes the scent of lavender.

When he gives her all this back in the car, she starts to tear up again. “You’re so sweet. I’m really sorry.”

“There’s no need to be sorry. We’re going to have a great weekend.” He hands her a bottle of water as she pops the blister packet. “I don’t… I don’t just want to touch you like that. I like being with you.”

“I know,” she tells him after she swallows the painkillers. “But… I thought that maybe we could do what we talked about on the phone if we got enough time on our own.”

Now he’s the one swallowing. A few days ago they’d tried having phone sex when Tessa’s roommate was out of their room. He’d asked her to imagine it was his fingers moving inside her and she’d said, in her breathy little whisper, that she was imagining his cock instead. Scott had just about come then and there.

Tessa leans in to kiss him and he holds her face in his two hands and shows her just how much he likes that idea.

“We’ll both be home for two straight weeks from next weekend. We’re going to have a tonne of time to do that.” He’s home in Ilderton for the next three weeks, and Tessa will be there for all of August.

“Okay.” She kisses him quickly on the lips. “Let’s go home.”

On their drive he discovers that Tessa has a deep devotion to Halls and Oates, and specifically ‘You Make My Dreams Come True’, that she’s managed to keep well hidden from him until now. He starts teasing her about it, but shuts up when she raises her eyebrows as he starts tapping his fingers on the steering wheel to the rhythm of a country song.

Tessa heads straight up to her room when they arrive, and he heats up the teddy in the microwave. It’s a very weird experience to watch it revolving on the plate, like it’s being prepared to be eaten. He feels as though he should apologise to the bear and assure it that they won’t have them for dinner.

When he goes upstairs Tessa is tucked up in bed wearing her pyjamas. She places the teddy over her stomach and thanks him again. He kicks off his shoes and sits down on top of her duvet.

“This isn’t how I imagined your first time in my bed,” Tessa admits while she loads up her laptop.

“I thought it might be a little different too.” This is his first time in her room since it became hers. It’s pretty, light purple walls with prints of dancers hanging up on them.

“Do you have something you want to watch? I’ve been rewatching _Gilmore Girls_ but I can look at that later.”

“No, that sounds good. Do you want some chocolate?”

She shakes her head before laying it on his shoulder. “No, thanks. Maybe later.”

Scott hasn’t watched _Gilmore Girls_ before, and he’s wondering why because it’s very funny. He feels like he’s passed some sort of test when Tessa smiles after he says that Rory should be with the Jess guy instead of the lanky dude she’s currently dating.

They watch an episode and a half before a car pulls up outside. He kisses her on the forehead and goes to his own room. Kate knocks on his door a little while later to thank him again for picking Tessa up, mentioning that she’s feeling under the weather.

She looks better when she comes down for dinner, but she stays in her room for the rest of the evening. He goes out to spend time with his friends, but keeps getting distracted by her messages informing him about the latest events in Stars Hollow. When his buddies tease him he says that he’s seeing a girl back in Barrie, and is very thankful that he’s saved Tessa’s name in his phone as Jane in case they look over his shoulder. It feels like his friends not knowing his girlfriend cuts through the bullshit or something. He doesn’t feel awkward telling for not telling them things, and he doesn’t have to worry about what they’ll think when they see them together. Because no one sees him and Tessa like that. Maybe that makes it easier for them to just be themselves.

He doesn’t see her until dinner the next day after she and Kate spend the day with her nana. Tessa smiles when he asks if she’s feeling better today and her mom suggests that some exercise would be good and offers to go on a walk with her. Scott blurts out, “You could come to the rink with me.”

Everyone else at the table stares at him for a few seconds before Kate says, “What a nice idea, Scott. Tess, it’s been so long since you skated, wouldn’t that be fun?”

“Uh, yeah. I guess.” Kate seems to mistake Tessa’s confusion for disinterest and frowns at her. “I mean, thank you, Scott. I’ll just go up and get changed.”

She’s back down a few minutes later, dressed in her practice clothes. They don’t hold hands on the short walk over to the rink in case their parents are watching through the windows, or someone is still there.

“We’re actually going here?” she asks when he tries the door before unlocking it.

“Yeah. Where did you think we were going?” He jogs over to the alarm and puts in the code.

“Somewhere else?”

“You can skate, right?” he teases, taking her hand and leading her over to where the rental skates are kept.

“I can! I just haven’t done it for a few years. I don’t want to risk an injury.”

She’s more conscientious than he is, but they knew that already. And if he had been a little more cautious back then maybe he wouldn’t be here, he could be on the ice with some other girl instead. But that’s a jagged line of what ifs he doesn’t want to down right now. “I’ll keep you safe.” He encourages her to sit down on the bench and gets out some skates in what should be the right size.

“I know you will.” She smiles down at him as he kneels before her, fitting the boots on.

Tessa lacks her usual grace and balance as they make their way to the gate, finding it hard to stay upright walking with the skate guards on, but once they hit the ice she soon finds her way. His hand hurts from how tightly she’s grasping it, but her posture is as perfect as ever and it doesn’t take her long to find a rhythm. He’s impressed with how well she can glide, he doesn’t need to skate around as slowly as he expected.

“I had my first skating lesson here,” she says after they’ve made half a circuit around the rink.

“You did? Did you take many?”

“I switched to skating at Medway then, someone my dad knew at work’s husband worked there so I got a discount. I liked it, but I didn’t keep it up for very long, maybe two years? I had piano and gymnastics, and I was already getting kind of serious about ballet.”

He grins at Tessa’s idea of not keeping up with something for very long meaning only persisting for two years. “We could have been on the ice at the same time back then.” It’s weird to think about, that they could have met years ago. That their parents could have bumped into each other here and never known what they’d become to one another.

“I remember that I was wearing these huge mittens, and some older boys teased me and called me Big Hands. That sounds like something you’d do.”

“Tease a pretty girl?” He tugs gently at the bottom of her ponytail. “Never.” Tessa rolls her eyes at him and pulls him along faster. “You’re good at this,” the surprise colours his tone, “you haven’t come close to being off-balance.”

“I have excellent proprioception.” Her voice has that little edge of haughtiness to it, and it’s really hot. “Teach me some ice dance.”

“Slow down a little, I don’t think you’re ready for twizzles or lifts just yet.”

“You have dance holds, right? You mentioned different ones for the patterns you’re practising. Could we do one of those?”

“Sure.” It’s a very good idea. He puts his left hand at her hip and catches her right hand in his, extending it outwards. “This is Kilian hold.”

“You just wanted to put your hand there,” she snarks.

He squeezes her hip. “This is a common and simple hold. If I was going to make up one I would have touched you somewhere else.” He lifts his hand for a moment and taps her ass before returning it to her hip.

“Please concentrate on skating, Scott.”

He guides her forward, gliding on one foot and then the next. “Good thing we don’t skate together, I’d never get anything done.” Tessa giggles, and it causes her to lose her balance a little. He pulls her in close to him, whispering, “I’ve got you.”

They set off again, and it’s slow and a little messy, but it’s also a whole lot of fun. After they make it the whole way around, he directs her towards centre ice and spins her around under his arm before holding her close. “I’ve never kissed a girl on the ice before.”

“Well, here I am, about to make your dreams come true.”

Tessa is joking around, but it does feel like a dream. Being so close to her in his favourite place, getting to kiss her in a semi-open space. It’s a dream he doesn’t want to wake up from.

 

_August 2005_

Tessa’s eating a banana for some energy before dance class when Scott finally comes down the stairs. He leans in to kiss her and she turns so that all he gets is her cheek. She’s so mad. She came home from school for the month on Friday and they’ve hardly had any time together. He’d spent every night of the weekend, even Sunday, and most of the days, with his buddies. It’s not that Tessa minds him spending time with his friends, it’s that he could have made the effort for some time alone with her at some stage. She probably would be more forgiving if hadn’t woken her up by texting her at three in the morning, after not hearing from him all night, to ask if he could sneak into her room. Her room that was two doors down from where their parents were sleeping when he was drunk and noisy!

“Tess,” he coaxes. “I’m sorry for waking you up last night.”

“It’s not the waking up, I could have been up anyway if you’d bothered to keep in touch. You wanted to come into my room drunk at three a.m.!”

He frowns. “I would never do anything you didn’t want me to.”

Her face matches his now, but maybe more pronounced. How could he think she’d worry about that? “Of course you wouldn’t. But you would have been loud and woke everyone up!”

“I had one almost slip up. You’ve been trying to do stuff all weekend! It was a good idea for me to be out of the house because we could have been caught if we’d hooked up like you wanted to.”

He might have a point, but she’s not in the mood to accept it. “Oh, and you couldn’t text me when you were out? Couldn’t have your friends getting suspicious?”

“Exactly! They want to know all about this girl back in Barrie.”

“At least you can tell them that, I couldn’t tell my friends I had someone in Ilderton without them figuring it out somehow.” She knows Tanith is still suspicious.

“I wish you could tell people. Maybe… maybe you should come with me next time. We couldn’t be obvious, but we’d still be together.”

Tessa thinks that sounds too hard. “I get affectionate with my friends when I drink, I’d be way too handsy with you.” His eyes darken at that, and she wants to give in and kiss him, but there’s this unpleasantness scratching inside her that makes her keep talking. “Nobody’s ever going to know and I’ll be left with nothing to talk about with Tanith because all I think of is you and dance and I can’t talk about that with her either, and I’ll lose her and it will be your fault.” It wouldn’t be, and it doesn’t even sound like she means it. She just wants someone to fight her on something, not just sweep things away.

“What’s bothering you about Tanith?” he asks, avoiding her blaming and going straight for the real issue. Sometimes she thinks he sees her too clearly now.

Her shoulders sag and he puts his arms around her, which she doesn’t really deserve.

The doorbell rings. “That’s Charlie,” she says. “He’s dropping me at the dance studio on his way to work.”

“Do you have a ride home? I can come get you.”

She’d been thinking of going shopping, or out for lunch with her friends, but they should talk this out. “Thanks. I’ll be out by one-thirty.” She kisses him lightning fast before she goes.

Tessa is very glad that she agreed to Scott picking her up when she gets to the studio and remembers that Leah is in France and gets a text from Karen saying that she’s just back from camp and not up for a dance class yet. The only other girls there are ones who don’t like her, it’s been that way since Tessa started standing out, and it’s just gotten worse since she went to NBS. She hears them whispering all through warm-up and wishes she was still in the car with Charlie, helping him decide on what to get Nicole for her birthday, or better still, back home with Scott.

The dancing helps, until she can see Maya imitating her. It’s not Tessa’s fault that Maya never got in after three auditions (it might be a little her fault that she’d once gushed about how great NBS was in close proximity to her, but this was after years of provocation).

She doesn’t even bother changing after class, just leaves still in her leotard with a skirt and cardigan over it, and she’s so relieved to find Scott waiting for her in the parking lot.

“I’m so sorry.” She announces this before she even gets into the car.

He shrugs. “I should have messaged you. Or told you why I thought it was a good idea to get out of the house.”

“You were being sensible.” She’s not when she squeezes his hand, but she lets it go before anyone else from class walking by might see.

“Do you want to talk about what’s really bothering you?”

It’s a matter of figuring out how to start. But then there’s a knock at her window.

It’s Maya of all people. “Hi Tessa! I was wondering if you wanted to come for a smoothie with us.” What the fuck? “Who do you have with you?” She waves at Scott and all becomes clear.

“This is Scott.” Tessa so wants to say he’s her boyfriend, but Leah, Karen, and a few of the others already know what he technically is to her. “He’s my step-brother.”

Maya’s eyes light up. Bitch. “Oh, hey Scott! I’m Maya, I’m a friend of Tessa’s. You’re more than welcome to join us.”

This is part of the reason Tessa doesn’t want to go out with Scott’s friends. There will be girls there, girls who don’t know he’s hers, and she won’t be able to make that clear. The thought of having to watch other girls flirt with him makes her ill.

“Thanks, but we need to be going home.” Scott must somehow have known that Maya is definitely not Tessa’s friend, because she’s never seen him speak so coldly to someone. It makes his attitude towards her back when they were first living together seem like he was bending over backwards to make her feel at home.

Maya’s faces falls and Tessa tells her she’ll see her again soon before rolling up the window.

“How did you know?” she asks after they’ve driven away.

“That you didn’t like her? You got all tense and you gave her your fake smile. I’m a little disappointed, honestly. I kind of thought the only person you didn’t like was me back when our parents first got married. I felt special.” She laughs, as if the joke is funnier than it is. He strokes her knee. “You want to talk about it now?”

She takes a breath. “I don’t know if it’s a problem. Maybe it’s just a change. But… it’s different, and it’s been drummed into us for years to look out for things like that.”

“And the change is?”

Oh right, she hasn’t told him yet. “Tanith’s eating less. And differently? She hardly touches carbs anymore, and never any junk food. And she is eating more fruit and vegetables, but not enough. She was always the one who told me that I could still eat stuff like that, as long as it was in moderation. And she still says that to me even though she says she can’t do that anymore!”

“Are you worried she might have an eating disorder?”

“Not really, not yet. But maybe that it might be heading that way? And I’ve tried bringing it up with her, but she just shuts me down. And I’m afraid that if I keep doing that,” Tessa wipes her eyes, “that she’ll just shut me out completely. And then I won’t be able to help at all. And I’ll lose my best friend.”

“I’m sorry, Tessa. That’s really hard.” Scott puts his hand on her knee again. It’s another few minutes before he speaks. “Is there someone else you could talk to, someone at the company maybe?”

“I’ve thought about that, but I think that would make it worse, like I was ganging up on her. And maybe it really isn’t a problem, maybe I’m just being paranoid.”

“You know her really well, though. If you’re worried, there’s a reason.”

It feels good to hear that. “I just want her to be healthy.”

“Maybe tell her that? Don’t mention the food, just talk about how much you care about her.”

“I kind of feel like we’re both hidings things from one another, like she won’t talk to me about what’s going on with her until I tell her about us.” A cold war of secrets.

“Then maybe you should tell her. Are you scared she’ll tell your mom?”

She’s wondered about that. “I don’t think she would? It would be different if she thought I was being taken advantage of, but she’d know that wasn’t the case. It’s more like I said back on Canada Day – she’d tell me to stop, and she’d give very good reasons why, and I still wouldn’t do it. And if I wouldn’t do what she wants, why should she do what I’d recommend?”

“So you’d have the same problem, just with her knowing about us,” he summarises.

“Yes. But maybe it would help.” It seems selfish not to try.

“I think… you should do what makes you comfortable. But I don’t think you’re going to be satisfied until you’ve done everything you can to make sure she’s okay, and… I think it might be good for you to have someone to talk to about this.”

“You don’t.”

“Yeah, but the people I’d be most likely to tell are my brothers. And I can’t tell them. You have friends who could listen to you, who could, I don’t know,” the tips of his ears are getting red, “answer questions about stuff.”

She fills in the blanks. “You mean sex.”

“Well, yeah. I don’t… I don’t feel great being the only other person who knows what we’re doing, or what we want to do. Like, what if you’re nervous and don’t want to tell me, or know how to? You don’t have someone to talk that over with.”

“I’m not,” she says firmly. “I’m ready.”

“You can be ready and still be nervous, Tessa.”

“I know, but I’m not, not anymore.” She knows he’s the right person, and this is the right time.

“Okay.” He clears his throat. “What do you think you should do about Tanith?”

She folds her hands in her lap. “I should keep talking to her about staying healthy. And yeah, I think I should tell her about us.” She wants someone to know, to be able to share it. “But I should do it in person.”

“Yeah, that makes sense.” They’re nearly home now. “By the way, how was your class?”

“The class was good. The people there not so much. Did you ever take ballet? To help for ice dance?”

“We had some classes at the rink. I goofed off for a lot of them.”

He must have been a terrible distraction for everyone else there. Tessa couldn’t concentrate if he was in class with her even if he was on his best behaviour. “I could teach you. Or give you some tips anyway. We have the barre at home.” It had been so sweet of Joe to put one up for her.

“I’d like that.” They pull up outside the house. “Now?”

She’d been thinking of going for a shower, but she’s already in her dance gear, she looks the part. “Sure.”

There’s no one else around so she kisses him in the hall before they go down to the basement. “Do I get kisses if I do well?”

“You’ll get something,” she says.

His posture isn’t quite right when he stands at the barre, so she has him focus on elongating his back and spreading his shoulders wide. When he improves she takes off her cardigan.

Tessa decides to go through the arm positions with him, because she figures that would be the most useful (and maybe she likes looking at his arms). He holds them with way too much tension at first, and she has to remind him that it should look natural, his wrists should be curved, not at awkward angles. She runs her hands over his arms to smooth them out. When he improves she slips off her skirt.

Scott raises his eyebrows. “Are you doing what I think you’re doing?”

“Keep getting better and maybe you’ll find out.”

She coaches him through to fifth position, his arms nicely rounded and above his head, and when he’s finished she starts unzipping her new AinslieWear leotard. His fingers join hers on the zip.

“Can I do it?”

She nods, and he tugs it down. She nods again when he looks up, questioning if he should take the leo off. “I’m kind of sweaty,” she says as his hands move down her sides.

“You’re going to be sweatier after.” His voice is never usually this rough and it makes her inhale sharply.

She leans on him as she steps out of the pale pink leotard, digging into his arms with her nails. “Do you have a condom?”

He’s the one taking deep breaths now. “No more ballet lessons?”

“Another time.” She moves in closer and places her hands on the hem of his t-shirt. He helps her take it off. She reaches for her tights and he tugs them down for her, a little less carefully than she’d do it herself. Not that she cares if she has to throw these ones out, she has more than enough pairs.

Scott throws a soft blanket over the couch. “We don’t have to keep going. We can stop anytime you want.”

“I know.” She watches as he pulls off his sweatpants. “You have the condoms then?”

“In the cabinet under the tv.” He explains as she laughs, “I figured it was most likely going to happen here, I wanted to be prepared.”

She grabs the box and places it on the table beside the couch. “Preparation is good.” He stands behind her and kisses her neck while she takes her hair down.

“Do you want to leave your bra on or take it off?”

He’s seen her topless, and he’s seen her bare beneath her waist, but never naked. It’s a little scary, but it’s Scott and she trusts him. If he wants to see all of her, she’s ready to show him. “You can take it off.”

He does so, carefully, and then turns her around and kisses her before lifting her gently by the waist and laying her down on the couch. His hands move down to her hips and when she murmurs, “Please,” he drags down her underwear.

“I think you have to be the most beautiful person in the world.” He’s so sincere.

She places her hand on his cheek, pulling him down to kiss her. “Maybe it’s you.”

He laughs against her lips, moving his hand down between her legs and stroking her before entering her with one finger, and then two when she asks for more. His lips leave hers and traverse down her neck and over her chest, her breathing matching the movement of his fingers.

“Can I… can I give you a hickey?” he asks, his mouth hovering over the space towards the bottom of her breasts.

“Yes.” She likes the idea of his mark on her, even in a place where no one knows but them. Maybe especially in a place where no one knows but them.

Between his mouth on her chest and his hand lower still, it’s like Tessa’s whole body is focused on him. She’s so used to being in total control of it, has been praised for it since she was a little girl, but she loves responding to his body, his movement. It’s like dancing.

She comes hard and fast, and that’s the way he kisses her after. She tugs at his hair and he nips at her bottom lip. When he moves back she can see how hard he is through his boxers, and how big too. She’d wondered how it would fit when she first saw it, but mainly she wondered about how good it would feel.

“I want you,” she says, “I want this with you.”

Scott removes his underwear, dropping them beside hers, and picks out a foil wrapper from the box. He’s so methodical in how he opens it, so careful, but she can tell how much he wants to hurry from how his hands are shaking the tiniest amount. She sits up on her elbows so that she can watch him put in on.

“You’re sure?” She leans in and kisses him. “And do you want to lie down or sit up on my lap?”

“Lie down.” Being on top seems too exposed for right now, she wants him above her. His body follows her as she settles on her back, like she’s beckoning him.

He kisses her, soft and sweet and oh so slow. “I want to make this good for you.” He rubs his cock against her folds and it feels so good, but not enough.

“In me.”

It’s so slow, inch by inch, and it doesn’t hurt as much as she thought it might, but there’s still a little pain. There’s a pleasure too though, and she knows it’s good for him from the way his eyes are glinting. She can feel that he’s holding himself back by the way his hands press on her hips, and can see the restraint on his face.

He grunts when he’s fully inside her and she cries out too. It’s a little overwhelming, not sore but not satisfying. It doesn’t feel awesome, but there’s this promise that it might, a hint of something great.

Scott strokes her hair. “You okay?”

She nods. “It doesn’t hurt.” Much. “It’s just full.”

“You feel incredible. Like, fuck.” He breathes out and it’s like she feels it moving through her.

She circles her hips, and it hurts a little more, but it’s worth it to see him bite down on his lip. He starts thrusting, shallow at first and then a little stronger, and she grips one hand on the back of his head and the other on his arm. It feels better each time he pushes into her, practice making not quite perfect. She hadn’t expected to come, but when he places his thumb on her clit and presses the way he’s learned she likes, it just happens. It’s not as strong as the ones he’s given her with his fingers or his mouth, but it still makes her keen, and when her walls flutter around him he comes too.

Tessa doesn’t want to let him go after, wants to stay here the two of them forever, but he wants to make sure she’s okay and help her clean up. “Will you shower with me?” she asks. They’ll have to spend the evening acting like nothing momentous occurred, she wants to keep him close and connected for as long as possible.

He checks the time on his phone and says, “Sure,” wrapping her in the blanket and tidying up their clothes into his arms. He hides the condom box before standing up, and then they go upstairs.

They explore each other more in the shower - his hands rubbing a lather all over her legs and her chest, her lips making their way across his shoulders and down his back. He keeps checking in that she’s not hurting and when she tells him that it’s like after dancing, that fulfilling kind of tiredness, he smiles.

After, she sits on his lap while she dries her hair even though they end up a little hot and sticky all over again with the heat.

She goes downstairs with a book just before it’s time for her mom to come home, and he gets a glass of water and sits on the back of the couch as if he’s just popping in to say hi.

“I keep thinking of ridiculous things to blurt out when your mom asks how we are,” he says after they hear the car pull up. “She’ll ask, ‘What did you do today?’ and I’ll be like ‘each other!’”

Tessa’s still laughing when her mom comes through the door. She looks bemused. “What’s so funny?”

“I was telling Tess about how I forgot all my steps at my first ice dance competition.” She had laughed a lot when he told her that story.

Did she see her mom raise her eyebrows at his use of Tess? “Tessa, can you go to the car and get the rest of the groceries? There’s just one bag.”

When she gets back inside her mom says, “You and Scott are getting along much better now.” Tessa can’t tell whether the note of suspicion is real or imaginary.

“It’s easier than sulking.” She can’t imagine trying to pretend she doesn’t like him, it would be too difficult.

Her mom smiles, and Tessa relaxes. “Jordan is going to call us soon. She’s in Budapest right now.”

It feels like forever since she talked to her properly. In amongst her excitement there’s a slight fear that her sister will somehow sense a difference. She’s so glad now that Jordan isn’t here with them this summer, she could never have got away with this.

Scott is waiting for her on the landing when she gets back upstairs and she kisses and kisses him until it’s time to pretend.


	7. you take me higher than the rest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from [Higher](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fd_EJSHchyM)

_February 2015_

Scott doesn’t sleep well the night before the party. He can’t get the sound of Tessa saying his name out of his head - the way she had said it when she came. He knows he didn’t actually hear it when walking past her room on the way to the bathroom last night. That would be ridiculous. It was just a fantasy brought on by being close to her in this house again, a memory from long ago. But it had kept him up all the same.

He goes for a run in the morning to clear his head, leaving a note for her on the kitchen counter and locking the door behind him just in case (there had been a break-in on the other side of town last August, he wasn’t going to take any chances). Running is a post-Sochi thing, and he’s still not sure how much he likes it, if at all, but it’s good for him. He always knows where he’s returning to, unlike the kind of escaping he did after Vancouver, after Tessa. 

When he gets back there’s an addition to his note in Tessa’s pretty handwriting, letting him know that she’s gone down to the grocery store for milk. He must have just missed her since it’s still early. 

This is why he’s confused when he hears noises from the basement as he walks down the hall towards the stairs. He’s thinking animal or intruder as he marches down, feeling a little stupid with only yesterday’s rolled-up newspaper as a weapon.

But it’s Tessa. In a sports bra and leggings. Stretching at the barre. 

He drops the newspaper and she looks up. “Sorry, sorry!” he says. “I heard noises, and I thought you would still be at the store, so I just came down to check.” 

“That’s fine. Nothing to worry about. You were gone a long time, I thought you’d be back when I came home.”

“Yeah, you know. Thinking,” he raps his knuckles on the bannister, “is good.” 

She drags her teeth over her bottom lip, the corners of her mouth curving. “It is.” Her eyes have dropped from his face, and when he realises she’s looking at the sweat marks on his t-shirt his mouth reaches out for the wires of his earphones. He needs something to busy himself with.

Tessa squishes up her nose. “Do you chew on them too?” She always scolded him for doing that with bottle caps, until she didn’t. 

He’s trying to come up with an answer when he notices how her hand is ghosting over her abs down to her belly button piercing. It seems like an unconscious action on her behalf, she’s still fixated on his t-shirt, or maybe his arms?

“Uh, yeah. Nasty habit.” He pushes his hair back and Tessa’s eyes flicker up. They have that smokiness to them and Scott is fucked. “I should head to the shower. Clean up.”

Tessa hums. “Me too.” She looks a little like she had seeing him in the restaurant that first day they met again for a second. Shocked, like she can’t quite believe this is happening. “Not with you. Alone. In the other shower.” 

“Indeed.” Scott makes a finger-gun in her direction, which is humiliating, but at least probably distracting her attention from the certainty that he’s now half-hard. He turns on his heels and rushes up the stairs. “See you later, Tess!” He genuinely thinks he was smoother about this whole thing back when he was seventeen. 

When he’s in the shower (after taking care of business) he considers whether they should talk about things now or after the party. He’s not entirely sure what they should discuss, but he knows they can’t just avoid the subject forever. The party is tonight, and what excuse will they have to keep in contact after? Or are they friends now, with no need for excuses? If he does decide to take up Marie and Patch’s offer to join the staff at Gadbois will they still get to see one another? Even if he goes for the Cricket Club (which is where he’s leaning) and is in the same city as her, will she want to meet up, even just as friends? That’s something else they should talk about – the friends thing. Scott doesn’t get hard chatting with his friends. 

Any plans to talk are scuppered however, when he goes downstairs to find Tessa in the kitchen sitting at the counter talking to Danny’s Tessa (which is still confusing, and kind of weird). She’s probably the best of their relatives to encounter together first, she’s the only one who knows both of them to the same extent and wasn’t around back then. 

“Tessa dropped off the flowers for the party,” his Tessa explains, pushing him over a cup of coffee that’s made exactly the way he likes it.

Danny’s Tessa smirks at the coffee cup. “It was the least I could do to help out, I feel bad that we’ve left it all up to the two of you.” 

“Don’t worry about it,” he assures her.

“We work really well together,” Tessa adds.

“I bet you do.” Maybe Danny’s Tessa wasn’t the ideal family member to see them together first, she’s much too honest. “Nicole was going to come out and say hi before the party too, but she was sick again this morning.” She arches her eyebrows meaningfully.

“Is she pregnant?” he asks.

Tessa turns towards him. “You didn’t figure that out? Charlie mentioned her being poorly, and I guessed there had to be a reason why she didn’t step in once people realised it would be me and you organising things.” She goes back to facing the other Tessa. “Just because it would have been handier seeing as Nicole and I have planned events together before.”

“Oh yeah, nothing to do with everyone wanting to keep the star-crossed lovers separate.” 

Scott gulps. “So we’re just coming straight out and saying it now, okay.”

Danny’s Tessa shrugs. “It seems silly to avoid it. At least you two can be in the same room together now. We all know you fucked.” 

“Not recently,” Tessa says quickly.

“It’s been like, nine and a half years,” Scott agrees.

“August thirteenth 2005,” they say simultaneously.

Danny’s Tessa gets up off her seat, laughing a little to herself. “Well, it’s not noteworthy at all that you both remember that date. Now, I’m going to back to Charlie and Nicole’s to get ready for the party, we’ll all be over around three. We’re going to come as soon as your mom gets here, Scott.” 

“Great, see you then.” He walks his sister-in-law out to the front door. 

“I don’t think it’s weird,” she says before she goes.

“You don’t?”

“Okay, I do think it’s a little weird. But, I don’t know, the two of you kind of make sense.” 

“Yeah?” The hope is obvious in his voice. 

“I think you’d suit one another. Just don’t tell Danny I told you that.” She walks towards the car and then turns around, “Unless you work things out and then I can say I called it.” 

Scott laughs, because it seems like the right response, and salutes her before she takes off. He almost bumps into Tessa as she leaves the kitchen.

“Sorry! I nearly spilled my coffee on you.” She takes a sip from it. “I’m going upstairs to start getting ready. Do you want me to come down when the caterers get here?”

“No, I can take care of it. Thanks.” 

She’s just started walking up the stairs when she says, “Do they really think we’re fucking? Our brothers. I know Jordan doesn’t.” 

“I… Maybe?” He hasn’t exactly been talking to either of his about this, let alone hers. Avoiding those conversations mightn’t have exactly made it seem like it was all innocent party planning. “I just hope Kate and Dad don’t.”

“That would distract them from the party.” Tessa sighs, “No point worrying about it, I guess. It’s all going to happen one way or another.” He presumes she means the party and not them fucking. She mutters something else as she continues up the stairs, and it’s probably his mind playing tricks on him again, but it sounds an awful lot like, “We might as well have enjoyed ourselves if everyone was going to think we had anyway.” 

The caterers come more or less en masse, and he has a hard time telling one from the other. They’re all brunette and all their names begin with C. After a little while he figures out that Claudette is the slightly older lady from the French bakery. She serenely sets up the desserts and finds space in the fridge for the ones that need to be served later, as well as for everything the two other caterers need to store there, before leaving with a smile and a whispered “Good luck,” telling him to let her know when to come back and assemble the croquembouche. Meanwhile, Carlotta and Carmen squabble about what should go where, whether Italian or Spanish wine is better, and if Himalayan pink salt is the next big thing. When they start fighting over who gets the allegedly better plug points, he heads upstairs to get ready. He has enough stress right now without trying to mediate between caterers. 

Alex had found time to lay the outfit she had selected out for him yesterday and he sends her a selfie of him in it because she’ll complain if he doesn’t. He thinks that a jacket with a pocket square is a little too fancy, but she had been set on it. She sends back a photo of herself and Mitch making funny faces and holding up a napkin on which they’ve written ‘Make it happen’ in block capitals. He knows they’ve both contributed because of the difference in the two ‘a’s. 

‘Make it happen’ had been the theme of Alex’s speech to him in the car yesterday when he’d gone to London to leave her off at the train station. She’s convinced that Tessa still has feelings for him, and he thinks that she’s probably right. In the beginning he thought it was just him, but the more time he’s spent with Tessa the surer he’s become that the attraction is still mutual, still there. 

As he’s leaving his bedroom Tessa exits hers at the exact same time, and his breath actually gets taken away. Her dress is this pretty colour that’s not quite pink and not quite gold, and her skin looks luminous against it. She’s wearing these strappy heels that show how endless her legs are and her hair is piled up on top of her head. She pushes a tendril behind her ears when she sees him staring, her cheeks blooming. 

“You look beautiful,” he says. Previously he’d been going out of his way to avoid commenting on her appearance, it seemed like that would be awkward at best and harassment at worst. But she is beautiful, and he should tell her. 

“You look good too.” She clears her throat. “You always do.” She comes closer, her hands moving to fix his pocket square. “But this could be neater.” His throat is very dry as she refolds the fabric and tucks it in, before running her hands over his shoulders, straightening out his jacket.

“There, perfect.” Her voice has a little shake to it. 

And then Charlie comes running up the stairs. “Oh, great. I think this is the part where you start playing ballet music, Tess.” 

“We really were just talking,” she says, stepping away from him. “Anyway, I should go grab my phone before I go downstairs, I need it for when Jordan texts to say they’re almost here.” 

Charlie doesn’t seem any more interested in Scott’s avowals that they were just talking than he was in Tessa’s, just tells him to go downstairs because the guests are arriving. 

Danny, his Tessa, and Nicole are starting to get the bar running when he gets down. Keira is on Nicole’s hip, but wriggles down and runs over to him as soon as she sees him.

“Uncle Scott!” she yells, laughing as he scoops her up.

“Hey Keira, I missed you.” He kisses the top of her head and she snuggles into him.

“Miss you too.” 

“Do you still love going to pre-school?”

She starts telling him all about her teacher and her friends, but then he loses her attention completely. “Auntie Tess! Auntie Tess!” she calls out, sticking her arms out to be lifted. 

Tessa appears beside him and takes her into her arms. Keira puts her head to Tessa’s ear, whispering something. Tessa copies her, putting her hand over her mouth so he can’t figure out what they’re talking about. Their dresses kind of match, Keira’s pinker and floofier, and the sight of their heads bent close to one another is really one of the most adorable things Scott has ever seen. 

He senses his mom beside him even before she puts her hand on his arm. “Hello Scotty.” 

“Hey Ma.” He hugs her tightly even though it’s only been two days since he saw her.

“And hello Tessa! I swear you look prettier each and every time I see you.”

Tessa gives his mom a one-armed hug, and Keira imitates her, giving her grandma a kiss on the cheek for good measure. “Thank you, Alma. I’m so glad you could make it. It’s a pity Sam is working.” 

“Yeah, it’s just hard to get someone to swap shifts for Valentine’s. Hopefully we’ll all get together again soon.” 

Keira whispers in Tessa’s ear again, and Tessa nods. “Sorry, we’re going to have a little dance lesson before more people come. I’ll talk to you later, Alma. Scott, if you need me I’ll be in the basement, okay?” 

“Sure.” He resolutely does not think about how many times they’ve needed each other in the basement, or about how great she is with his (their) niece. Or how both of those things make him want to kiss her senseless. 

His mom is looking at him expectantly when he turns his head back around towards her after tracking Tessa down the stairs. “So, if you got around to proposing to Sam we could have another day like this.” 

She barks out a laugh. “Talking about my love life instead of yours, nice tactic.” 

“I don’t really have much of a love life right now, so there’s really not much to talk about there.”

“Up to your room, now.” She pushes him up the stairs.

“Mom! I am a grown man! And you haven’t lived here in sixteen years, you can’t send me to my room in this house.” 

“I’m not sending you there. We’re both going so we can have this conversation away from your brothers.”

That seems fair enough. They both sit down on his bed and he gets a strong, vivid flashback to crying on her shoulder here after she and his dad had sat him and his brothers down and told them they still loved each of them, and each other, but they weren’t in love with each other anymore. Maybe his mom is remembering the same thing when she puts her arm around him. 

“Now, I thought you told me you and Tessa were friends. You didn’t mention you were sending each other pining looks.” 

Tessa’s been sending him pining looks? “We are friends. It’s just… complicated.” 

“I’m not so sure that it is. Do you have feelings for her?”

“Of course I do.” 

“And do you want to do something about those feelings?”

Of course he does. But… “Not yet. I think… maybe we could do with some time less in each other’s pockets after this. To see if it’s real.” 

His mom beams at him. “Very good. I’m proud of you.” 

“If we do this again, we need to do it right from the start. I don’t… it would be really bad if we messed it up again.” Losing her once was hard enough.

“You were kids then, and you made some poor decisions. Now you’re a mostly mature, responsible adult. And when you get a second chance at something you don’t mess it up. You excel. Sure, there’s no guarantee it would end happily ever after, but no one gets that guarantee. You would work at it, and, from what I know of that girl, so would she.” 

“You’d really be okay with it?” 

“The only reason I wasn’t okay with it back then was because of how you handled it, and that it happened when the two of you were living in the same house. If you care about her, and she cares about you, and the two of you would be happy together… that’s all I could want.” 

“Thanks, Mom.” He pulls her in close. “Guess I’ll need to talk to Dad about this too.” He thinks that conversation might be a bit more awkward.

“Yes, no hiding things this time around, ya hear?” He nods dutifully. “And maybe leave off having that conversation for a while.” 

Scott laughs. “I don’t think today is the right day.”

“No, not the best time,” she agrees. 

The house has really filled up with guests when they go back downstairs – a lot of Moir relatives, people from Ilderton, colleagues of both Kate and his dad, the ladies from Kate’s book club, and the Virtue brothers and their wives. Tessa is over talking to her brothers now, holding Casey’s baby in her arms and making faces at her, and if Tessa and a little kid was cute, Tessa and a baby is like a neon sign informing Scott that he’s in very deep.

He feels like he should probably check in on Carmen and Carlotta to ensure they haven’t murdered one another yet (or have at least had the decency to leave detailed instructions on how best to heat and serve the food first). It’s weirdly quiet when he enters the kitchen, but he thinks the food being there is a good sign. He hears a shuffling sound in the pantry and goes to investigate. The chances that one of them locked the other in there somehow are worryingly high.

The sound that leaves his mouth when he sees them making out could probably best be described as a shriek. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t know! I should have knocked! So, so sorry!” He knocks his hip against the counter as he backs away with his hands over his eyes. 

Carlotta (or Carmen) is apologising as much as he is. “This was so unprofessional. Please forgive me, us. It won’t be a problem. We’ll get right to work.”

“Oh, it’s fine. There’s lots of time yet. You two just… yeah. I’ll let you know when to start getting things ready. Maybe by text.” He continues backing out of the kitchen. “FYI,” why the fuck is he using acronyms? “the best secret make out spot is actually the basement. Just, uh, for future reference.” 

Scott bumps into Tessa in the hall. “I was just looking for you. Why are you walking backwards?” He guides her down to the other end of the hall where they’re less likely to be overheard. “Have the caterers killed each other? Please tell me they haven’t.”

“No, definitely not killing each other. They were kissing in the pantry.”

Tessa snorts. “You’re joking, right?” 

“I walked in on them! They were all over each other! And then I apologised, and, and told them that the basement was the best secret place for hooking up.” 

She laughs that huge laugh he’s always loved, grabbing onto his arms for support. “Scott! Oh my God! I thought they hated one another!”

“They did forty-five minutes ago.” He can feel people’s eyes on them, and when he looks over into the living room all four of their brothers are lined up and staring at them with expressions that range from resignation for Charlie, to mild distaste for Danny and Kevin, to something not far from horror for Casey.

“Oh, fuck them,” Tessa says, immediately pulling his focus back to her.

“Tess!” He squawks out her name amongst some strangled laughter. She’s wearing that pleased expression she used to have when she made him laugh.

“Well, not literally. I’m actually related to two of them.” He laughs some more. “But seriously. We’re doing nothing wrong. We didn’t do anything wrong back then either.” She moves her head from left to right. “Okay, the not telling anyone part was wrong, but the us part…” Her voice is quieter now, but somehow all the surer for it. “There was never anything wrong about that.” 

He closes his eyes for a second. There’s this intense relief hitting him after hearing her say that. “There wasn’t. I think we were good for one another, apart from, you know, the sneaking around.” 

“We were teenagers.” She shrugs, a wistful kind of smile on her face. “Teenagers make mistakes.” 

He wants to say “We’re not teenagers anymore,” but it feels too much for this moment, so he just nods.

“Oh,” she squeezes his arms and he realises that she hasn’t let go, “I got distracted with your story. Jordan texted that she’s nearly here with my mom and your dad.” 

“Oh, great. I’ll text the caterers.” He really doesn’t want to interrupt them again. They can be nasty when they don’t like people. “Should we all go hide?”

Her eyes crinkle. “Scott, we decorated the driveway with flags, and there are a lot of cars parked outside. There’s no point hiding.” 

“You’re right.” They hear a car and he gets a shot of nerves and a little excitement. “Should we head in to the others?” 

They stand in beside their brothers, at opposite ends like in all the awkward family photos they’ve taken at weddings over the years, except this time their smiles aren’t forced. 

Jordan comes through the door first, followed by Kate and his dad, and even though they must have figured out there was a party they still seem blown away by the amount of people there. When they reach their kids Kate is kind of weepy and his dad a little overwhelmed. There are a lot of hugs, and then Kate says, “Did you organise this all together?” 

There’s a silence, until Jordan says, “It was all Tessa and Scott actually. They did a really great job.” 

“Tessa and Scott?” Kate repeats, her eyes saucer-wide. His dad’s expression is much the same. “That’s… that’s really lovely.” She reaches forward to hug him again, tighter this time, and then does the same to Tessa. His dad follows Kate’s lead, and then Tessa puts an arm around them both and shows them around the rooms they decorated, pointing out all the trinkets and reminders of their travels. 

Jordan hangs back beside him. “You two pulled this off. I’m impressed.”

“Thanks, Jordan.” She makes him a little nervous, he feels like there’s a but coming.

“Especially happy that we didn’t arrive to the two of you in bed together!” She slaps him on the back and he laughs, incredibly awkwardly. “But… if you two were to… pursue things… I’m fine with it as long as I don’t have to see anything.” And after that bombshell she just up and leaves and goes to talk to his cousins. 

He spends the next hour or so mingling, catching up with friends and family, and the next hour eating the truly delicious food. He’s never right beside Tessa but their eyes seem to catch each other’s frequently, and she smiles every time. 

Everyone gasps when Claudette rolls in the croquembouche, and as spectacular as it looks, Scott is mostly impressed with its sturdiness. When he turns to comment on this to Danny’s Tessa, he finds his own Tessa by his side. 

“Do you think it would be overkill to have a croquembouche on top of an ordinary wedding cake?” she asks. 

“Are you thinking about Tanith’s?”

“Oh, that’s already chosen. I was, um, thinking more about mine if I ever got married.” He’s not going to think about Tessa getting married. 

“You should have all the cake you want, on top of all the other cake you want.” 

Tessa’s eyes are so bright and soft at the same time. She reaches out and squeezes his hand. “Thank you, Scott. I…” 

Danny’s Tessa reappears again, handing them both champagne glasses, and then Casey’s wife Megan appears behind her and fills up their glasses. He can see Nicole and Michele doing the same at the other side of the room. 

Jordan comes towards them then, and hisses, “Are you ready for your speech?” 

“Speech?!” Tessa squeaks.

“What speech?” he demands.

“The speech before they cut the cake! With a toast?”

“We didn’t know we had to organise a speech.” Tessa looks stricken. 

He tries to reassure her, “We thought of everything else.”

“Well, you two should do it. You both do public speaking about inspiring people and overcoming adversity and rah-rah sports and ballet. You’ll be fine.” 

“You’re a lawyer, Jordan! This is absolutely your area.” 

Jordan actually wags her finger. “The only time I’ll have to make a speech about a marriage is when it’s ending.” 

Everyone has full glasses in their hands and people are starting to get impatient. 

“I think this would be a good change for you, Jordan,” he says. 

And then Tessa pushes her sister out towards the centre of the room and clinks her glass to get everyone’s attention.

Jordan plasters on a smile. “Well. It’s wonderful to be here to celebrate Joe and Kate’s tenth anniversary. Of both their meeting and their marriage.” Scott’s beginning to think this mightn’t have been the greatest idea. “We were all a little surprised when Mom came home from her cruise with a new husband, and therefore a new family. Super glad none of you are axe murderers!” She raises her glass towards him and his brothers. “Huh, thought that would get a laugh. Probably should have realised it wouldn’t play too well in Ilderton.” This does get a laugh. “Anyway, despite our initial reservations we all grew to know that this marriage was a wonderful event, that joined two kind, caring people together, and all our lives have been the better for it. And this party, which has been so thoughtfully prepared by Tessa and Scott…”

“To Tessa and Scott!” Danny’s Tessa yells, and then everyone starts toasting them. She winks at him, and maybe it’s crazy, but he’s questioning if she could somehow be colluding with Alex. 

“Yes, thank you to Tessa and Scott, who will now finish off this speech.” Jordan steps back and pushes the two of them forward.

Jesus, he didn’t realise there were quite that many people invited. “Like Jordan was saying, this is a party to celebrate Kate and Joe, and their love. Initially, uh, we might have been taken aback, but we all soon saw how happy they made each other, and how they worked to make sure that we, all their kids, were happy too. And they still have that same love, and are making each other just as happy, ten years later.” He really doesn’t know where he’s going with this. 

Tessa raises her glass. “To finding love in unexpected places. And to working to make it flourish. To Kate and Joe!”

As the murmurs of “Kate and Joe,” move around the room he clinks his glass against Tessa’s and keeps his eyes on hers as they both drink to their parents’ marriage. And maybe to themselves. 

People begin to leave in dribs and drabs after the desserts, with the family members holding out the longest until everyone notices how tired the party’s guests of honour are after all their travelling. 

The kids and their partners do a quick clean-up after Kate and his dad head upstairs, before agreeing to meet back tomorrow to eat leftovers and do a thorough job. He, Tessa and Jordan hang out for a little while longer in the kitchen, eating croquembouche and churros and drinking the last of the open champagne bottles.

And then Jordan leaves and it’s just him and Tessa, him with his jacket long-abandoned and her with her shoes off.

“It turned out really well,” he says.

“We make a very good partnership.” 

“Virtue and Moir, party planners!” They clink their glasses again, and down the last of the champagne.

Tessa yawns, and he tells her to go up to bed. 

They both stand up and she embraces him, settling her head against his shoulder, just over his heart. She can probably hear how fast it’s beating as he puts his arms around her. They don’t say anything, just breathe in and out until their breathing patterns match, become synchronised. She starts to sniffle and he lifts her head up gently, wiping away a tear that falls down her cheek.

“Are you okay, Tessa?”

“I’m… I’m sorry for how it all ended. I…”

“Tess,” he holds her to him again, “you don’t need to apologise. You did the right thing.” 

“But we… I’ve hardly seen you since then. We missed so much.”

“It was the right thing then, maybe we should have just tried talking again earlier. But we’re here now.” 

They’re here, alone, his hand on her cheek and their faces so close together. It would be so easy to close the gap between their lips.

“I can’t see you,” she says. It’s like a kick to the stomach. He takes away his hand because she probably doesn’t want him touching her either. “No! I’m sorry, I’m doing this all wrong.” She wipes at her face, and takes a deep breath. “I don’t think we should see each other in person for a little while, but I think we should stay in contact. If you want to. I know that I do. I think… we need to take a little time apart to figure out what we want after being so close again. If we… we need to think this through.”

This is so much better than he could have hoped. She wants to take their time and figure things out. This could be better than the best scenario. “I agree. Completely. That’s what I think we should do, too.”

“It is?” She looks so hopeful. 

“Yes. We shouldn’t jump into anything. We’re not teenagers anymore. We have to be sure that this is what we want, and that we’re ready for it.” 

Tessa hugs him again, tighter, and he holds her until they’re ready to let go.


	8. I don’t want this moment to ever end

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This chapter contains scenes of a sexual nature between two teenagers over the age of consent but under the age of eighteen. It also contain references to what may be disordered eating in a secondary character
> 
> Chapter title from [With Me](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8z-qP34-1Y) (which I found again by searching ' _Gossip Girl_ limo sex song')

_August 2005_

Tessa helping her mom pack for her night away in Toronto is not a tactic to get her and Joe out of the house earlier, she’s just being helpful. Really. It has nothing to do with maximising her time with Scott now that Jordan is coming for the next week before she goes back to college and he is going to be staying in Barrie on weekdays again. 

“You’re sure you don’t want to come too, Tess? We could get you another hotel room for you if you like.” 

“It’s fine. I’ll see Jordan when she gets here tomorrow. Scott will be here after he gets back from hanging out with his friends anyway, I’m not going to be alone.” Scott isn’t going to hang out with his friends, he’s coming straight home after he finishes practising at the rink. 

“I’m so happy you’ll have Jordan to keep you company now. I know this hasn’t been an ideal summer for you, honey.”

It has, but she can never tell her mom that. “It’s not been so bad. I was thinking I could go visit Tanith in Toronto during the week if that’s okay?”

“How about next weekend?”

“She’s doing something with her friends from the corps then.” Tessa has no idea what Tanith has planned for next weekend, but she knows that she will be here with Scott.

“Oh, right.” Her mom frowns. “During the week would be better then, yes. Maybe you could have Anna over before you go back to school, after Jordan goes back to Queens?”

“That would be great, thanks Mom.” She zips up the bag. “Do you want me to carry this downstairs?” 

Her mom kisses her cheek. “You’re such a good girl, Tessa.” Her stomach churns. “But I can do that myself, thank you.” 

Tessa follows her mom downstairs and makes the appropriate responses when she reminds her that there’s chicken for sandwiches, and that the emergency numbers are on the fridge. They hug before she leaves, and Tessa gives Joe a hug too. He seems surprised, but he smiles afterwards, her mom too. 

Once they’ve gone down the driveway she texts Scott. He should be home soon. Charlie and Nicole are away too, off to her family’s cottage, so there aren’t going to be any interruptions. She and Scott can do whatever they like, wherever they want. Her phone buzzes right after she sends it and she’s a little surprised he bothered messaging her back instead of just taking off. But when she opens the text it’s not from him, but a long one from Tanith. Tessa feels guilty before she starts reading - she hasn’t been in contact with her enough over the past two weeks, and what she reads doesn’t do much to lessen that guilt. 

She’s still in the hall when Scott comes bursting through the door. “Honey, I’m home!” He grabs her to him and presses a kiss to the side of her head. “Hey, is everything okay?”

“I got a message from Tanith.” She rests her head on his shoulder. “About the stuff I was worried about. She says that two weeks ago the new senior ballet mistress, Natalia, told her she needed to gain ten pounds and put on muscle. And that she been thinking about that and it made her realise she was going about trying to be healthy in the wrong way, and that she needs to focus on what’s going to make her strong. And she thanked me for trying to talk to her about it.” 

“That’s great, Tess.” He rubs her arm. “Isn’t that a good thing?”

“Yeah, it is. I just… I should have been there for her more. She’s been working through this for two weeks and I didn’t know about it.” 

“I’m sorry.” 

“Why are you sorry?” He’d been so helpful in talking this out with her. 

“I’m the one who’s been keeping you occupied.”

“You haven’t been stopping me from calling my friends. I was being selfish.” 

“You’re not selfish, Tessa. And you helped her a lot, if you hadn’t been talking to her about this stuff already maybe she wouldn’t have been so ready to accept hearing it from someone else. And maybe she needed to hear it from someone like that for it to really sink in. You did your best.” 

Tessa’s not sure if she has been doing her best recently. Other than in her relationship with him. But she had tried, and maybe that was something. “I’m going to try and visit her this week, I can talk to her properly then and see what I can to help.”

Scott kisses her cheek. “And tell her about us?” 

“Yeah,” she smiles. It might be easier now, with everything else out in the open already. She really wants to be able to tell someone how happy she is, and the reason why. 

He tugs her hand and leads her into the kitchen. “Why don’t we have something to eat first and then we can do whatever we want.” 

She hops up on one of the stools beside the breakfast counter. “And what do you want to do?”

“I want to kiss you.” He does so. “I want to touch you.” He does that too, running his hands over her legs up under the hem of her short denim skirt. “I want to make you come.” He does not follow through on this, just kisses her again before washing his hands and starting to prepare some sandwiches. 

She asks him about skating and he tells her about the new stroking exercise he’s working on, how he’s trying to make his edges deeper and improve his speed across the ice. He asks her about her dance class and she tells him about how it’s much more fun with her friends there too, and how she thinks Ms. Swan will be impressed with the improved height to her leaps once she gets back to NBS.

He flicks water at her when they’re washing up and it makes her white camisole slightly see-through. “You did that on purpose.”

“Never.” He lifts her up, laughing into her neck, and she hooks her legs around his hips. “Where do you want to go? We can make out anywhere for once.” 

“The couch in the living room?” She can hear her voice getting breathier as he lays kisses along her collarbone. 

“Taking it back to the start.” 

As he carries her in, she asks, “Did you think it would end up like this?”

“I don’t think I expected anything,” he says. 

“I didn’t expect it to be like this.” She kisses him properly once they’re sitting down.

“Like what?”

“Us.” She didn’t expect that he’d become one of the most important people in her life. She moves up his lap so that she’s straddling him, her skirt riding up so that it’s her underwear pressing against his sweatpants as she rocks into him. 

“Babe, we have all night. We can take our time.” He runs a lazy hand through her hair.

“But we’re not going to have much time together after tonight. Jordan is coming tomorrow and I don’t know how we’ll get away with anything with her here, the guest room is right beside mine so she’ll hear me sneaking out. And then you’ll be back in Barrie and I’ll only see you on the weekends I’m here. If you’re going to still be coming here after you turn eighteen.” She knows the custody arrangement won’t be in place after then, not that she has any experience of her own with a father being interested in visitation. 

Scott kisses her forehead. “I’ve been thinking about when you go back to school in September. If you wanted, I could come to Toronto and visit. It’s only just over an hour away. I could see you on the weekends you’re there, I still want to keep coming to see my dad but… A few weekends would be okay, and I might have a new skating partner after Nationals and need to be around Barrie more anyway. I could even come during the week if you can get away in the evenings.” 

“You want to come see me in Toronto?” There’s this silly tremble in her voice. 

He brackets her face with his hands. “Yeah, if you’d like that.”

“I would,” she says, barely giving him any time to finish. “I’d love that. I guess… I didn’t know for sure that you wanted this to go past the summer.” 

The kiss he gives her is so soft. “I do. If I meet you in Toronto we could go out and do things, real dates where we can hold hands and kiss in public.”

“You could meet my friends. If you wanted.” She’s thinking about telling Anna too. Hiding it from her during summer school was hard enough, she doesn’t think she’ll last long once term starts.

“I’d like that. I was thinking you could maybe meet some of my friends from the rink in Barrie. There’s one girl who used to do a lot of ballet, I think you’d really like her. Oh, and, uh, my mom is going away the weekend after my birthday and I thought maybe you could try and come stay with me? We’d have a whole weekend to ourselves.” 

“Yes. I can make some excuse up for Mom.” 

“You’re sure? I know you won’t have Saturday class, but…”

“I want to have as much time as possible with you.” 

He grins right against her mouth. “Great. You can be my belated birthday present.” 

She grinds down on him. “Will you sleep with me tonight? In my room, I mean. I want to wake up with you beside me.” 

“Yes.” He tightens his grip around her waist. “Do you want to go up now?” 

She nods, and he stands up, then lifts her the whole way up the stairs and into her room.

The thing that sort of surprises Tessa about sex is that the more she has it, the more she wants it. Maybe it’s that they’re getting better at it, each time a little more intense than the time before as they explore and learn what the other person likes. She knows he likes it when she runs her fingers over his chest, when she kisses his cock, when she says his name as she comes. She thinks he likes being buried inside her most of all, and maybe she likes that most too. She likes how connected they are, how close, how it sometimes seems that their hearts are matching rhythms when they’re pressed against one another, chest on chest. 

At first she’d been nervous about being on top, she hadn’t been sure what to do and she’d worried over whether her body would look funny that way, that maybe he’d see something he didn’t like that he hadn’t noticed when she’d been lying down in front of him. But Scott seems to love how she looks no matter what way he sees her. And it had been pretty easy to figure things out down on the couch in the basement with her on his lap, moving her hips around and around and up and down until they were both coming, silent swears on their lips. 

That’s how they’d done it last night when their parents were asleep, and it’s how they’re doing it now. Except now he’s surrounded by her pink pillows, his dark hair standing out with her pale hand gripping it against them. 

“You’re perfect,” he tells her, leaning his head down so that he can put his mouth on her breasts. 

“Perfection doesn’t exist. We can merely strive for excellence.” She’s parroting something she heard at school, and her voice is perhaps a little on the prim side for someone who’s currently riding her secret boyfriend. 

“Well, you’re pretty fucking excellent then.” He sucks again on that spot where he left a hickey the first time. She’s probably romanticising it but she thinks it looks like a little red flower.

“You’re pretty fucking excellent, too.” He likes it when she swears too, she can feel it from how his grip on her hip tightens and he thrusts that little bit harder. 

They’ve discovered that when she’s on top they don’t need to touch her clit with one or the other of their hands or fingers to get her off. She comes if they move together just right, his body and her body pressing and pushing for pleasure. They work so well as one that they find that pleasure, that blinding, warming, brilliant pulse, together. And it feels something close to perfect.

Tessa likes what happens after sex too, when they’re cleaned up (or maybe still all sticky) and lying together quietly, how he’ll whisper in her ear and rub the places on her body that he gripped. 

“I can’t wait to kiss you outside,” he tells her. 

“Wherever we want. No one will know who we are in Toronto.” 

“We’ll just be Tessa and Scott.” 

“Just us.” She holds him closer.

“Uh, I was thinking. When we’re not living together as much, maybe sometime later, we could tell more people. It wouldn’t be as weird for people then. It might be easier.” 

He’s saying people, but he has to mean their family. “Sometime later,” she echoes, partly because she’s in no way ready to tell her mom or her siblings, and partly because she wants to make sure that he meant it. That he wants this to last until some indefinite point in the future. 

“Yeah, sometime later.” 

“We could… we could do that.” He kisses her hair, and she feels a little less tentative. “Yes.” She starts yawning then, like this has taken it out of her.

“Do you want to go to sleep, Tessa?”

The process of shaking her head sets off another yawn. “I want to spend more time with you.”

“We’ll still be together, I’m not going anywhere. We probably shouldn’t have stayed up until three last night.”

“Not the best idea.” 

“Do you want to put something on?” He strokes her leg. “Those Minnie Mouse pyjamas maybe?”

She laughs, “No. Can I wear your t-shirt?”

He disentangles himself from her, throwing off the duvet and grabbing his old Skate Canada shirt from the floor with some crazy speed. She sits up to watch him better. He puts in on her himself, careful not to snag her hair as he pulls it down. 

“Do you sleep naked?” she asks, intrigued, when he tugs the comforter back up and lies down again.

“Usually boxers in summer, but you threw them to the other side of the room and I’m too lazy to go get them.” 

She falls back. “You weren’t being very lazy when you jumped up to get that t-shirt.” 

He moves closer to her, passing his hand down her front. “I really like the idea of you wearing my clothes.” 

Tessa turns on her side so that she’s facing towards him. “Is this hot for you?”

“You’re always hot to me, but yeah, it is.” 

“Interesting,” she says, closing the tiny distance between their lips.

She yawns again after and he whispers, “Let’s go to sleep. Do you want some space or to be close together?” 

She hadn’t wanted to ask, but he kind of offered. “Will you hold me? For a little while. I might move around, I get restless sometimes.”

Scott lies on his back, pulling her with him. “Is this okay?”

She settles her head above his heart, and listens to its steady beat. “Yes.” Tessa feels like she’s in just the right place.

 

_August 13th 2005_

Scott wakes up hard. This is not a shock considering that his girlfriend’s ass is pressed against him, the both of them lying on their right sides with his arms wrapped around her. He tries to move back a little, but Tessa just wriggles closer again. 

“Tess,” he whispers. “I’m just moving a little, I’m not leaving.”

“Good morning,” she murmurs, arching her back into him, which does nothing to help his situation. She stiffens, and then rubs herself up against him. “We haven’t done it like this before.”

Fuck. “Are you awake enough?” She moves against him achingly slowly. He lifts back her hair and puts his mouth right to her ear, “Are you wet enough?” 

She gasps a little, and then drags his hand down the t-shirt of his that she’s wearing and up under the hem. “I will be.” She directs his hand up and down her folds, just the gentlest pressure. 

“I think you’re ready. I’m going to get a condom, we left them in your bedside table, yeah?”

Tessa hums and replaces his hand with her own. He wants to have morning sex with her all the time. After he makes sure the condom is secure he lines himself up, lifting the t-shirt out of the way. “You’re sure, Tess?” 

“Yes.” Then she sinks down on him and Scott almost blacks out. The sound Tessa is making is almost as good as how she feels.

“Fuck.”

“Oh my God.”

“This…”

“Yeah… You’re so deep.” It’s the first coherent thought either of them has managed to produce.

“So tight.” It feels amazing. “Can I?”

“ _Please_.”

She moans as he thrusts, louder than usual because there’s no one around, but not as loud as last night. He wants to hear her like that again, and he doesn’t think he’s going to last long. “Is fast okay, Tessa?” 

“Yes. Fast is good. More time later.” 

All it takes is a few thrusts and his thumb on her clit to have them both coming. It’s rushed, but it’s good, and they can make it last longer the next time. 

Tessa inclines her head back on his shoulder. “Do we have to get up?”

“I’ll take care of the condom, you stay here.” He goes searching for his boxers so that he’s not completely naked before going to the bathroom and flushing it down the toilet. He knows that’s not good for the drains or whatever, but they can’t take any chances on anyone seeing it and the ensuing conversations about which of them is sneaking someone into the house. Or maybe Kate and his dad would just go straight to suspecting the truth.

Tessa is standing outside the door when he comes out. “I want to brush my teeth before I kiss you,” she explains. He goes back in with her and they brush their teeth, he sits on the edge of the bath and pulls her down so that she’s sitting on his lap. 

“I need to get my clothes from your room,” he says. She looks confused, so he finishes brushing and spits out the toothpaste and repeats it.

She brushes for a little longer, and then after she rinses her mouth, says, “You don’t need to go to your room right away. It’s still early, they’ll only be at the airport now.” She puts her arms around him. “They’ll probably stop for lunch somewhere, too. We have ages.” 

It is only eight. He kisses her, and they try to walk out of the bathroom and down the hall like that until they nearly crash into the doorframe and burst out laughing. 

Their kisses are slower when they’re back in her bed. He can tell she’s getting sleepy again and she doesn’t protest but just lays her head on his chest when he says, “We can nap for a little bit.”

He isn’t all that tired initially, and is planning on getting up in a while and tidying up in case their parents and Jordan come back earlier than expected, but Tessa’s steady breathing and her body lying across his lulls him into sleep. He’ll just doze for a little bit and then leave. He wants another hour or so of just the two of them before they have to go back to acting like they’re step-siblings. 

The sound of a glass breaking wakes him and he clutches at Tessa to make sure she’s still in his arms. She is, stirring just a little, and it’s her he sees first when he opens his eyes. Her hair lying all over his chest and her hand on the top of his arm. It’s when he looks up that he sees Kate. She’s standing beside the door, her mouth hanging open and her eyes full of something he can’t quite identify. There are splashes of orange juice on her white top, and a pool of it beside her feet, shards of glass all over the floor.

Scott squeezes his eyes shut, like this is back when he first played hide and seek and thought that if he couldn’t see the seeker they couldn’t see him either. 

“Get out of my daughter’s bed,” Kate bites out. Her voice is quiet, but deadly, and then gets louder and less controlled. “Get out, get out, get out!” 

He feels Tessa lift her head, she’s shaking. “Mommy…”

Kate starts crying then. “You have three minutes to get dressed. And then I’m coming back up here.” Her heels echo down the hall.

He opens his eyes and sits up. His skin is clammy, like he’s about to throw up. Tessa has her head in her comforter, still shaking. He rubs her back but that doesn’t seem to help.

“I’m… I’m so sorry, Tessa.” He doesn’t know what to do, what to say. 

“We should get up. Get dressed.” She’s still curled up like a little hedgehog. 

He tumbles out of the bed and pulls on his sweatpants. All of Tessa’s clothes from yesterday are littered across the wooden floor. Even if they had somehow tried to come up with a believable excuse for why he was shirtless in her bed, there was no getting away from the evidence.

Her eyes are red when she raises her head. “Don’t cut yourself on the glass. Please be careful.” He leans over to hug her but she shakes her head. “I think you should go. I need… I need to get dressed before she comes back up.” 

“Okay. We can talk after. We’ll figure this out, Tess.” His words sound hollow to him. He doesn’t know how any of them are going to figure this out. 

He dodges the glass and the orange juice, scurrying down the hall until he reaches his room. He wants to curl up in a corner and not have to leave, but he knows he won’t get away with that. He has to face this. 

After spraying some deodorant and putting on a t-shirt (he wonders if Tessa is still wearing his), he opens his bedroom door to go downstairs. Kate has just reached the landing. Her expression is one he’s never seen, and he doesn’t know if she’s glaring or disgusted or scared. 

“Kate… I…” 

“Your father will speak to you downstairs.” Her voice is so cold. She turns and walks down the hall, her footsteps slowing as she gets closer to Tessa’s door. She pauses, then knocks lightly. Kate takes a glance over her shoulder and this is enough to send him down the stairs.

His dad is sitting on the couch in the living room with his head in his hands, all coiled tension. He doesn’t move when Scott comes in and sits on the armrest. Scott tries to say something but all his words are stuck in his throat. 

They both flinch when they hear Tessa shouting. “Oh my God. How can you even _say_ that? This is Scott! He would never do that, never! If anyone was pushing for something it was me.” He thinks his dad’s shoulders relax a little. 

He’s never heard Tessa shout before. Back when they had all first started moving in together, she used to snipe at her mom sometimes, or at him, or go off and sulk, but she never raised her voice. And she must really be shouting if they can hear her down here.

There’s a murmur of Kate responding to her, but he can’t pick out any of the words.

“He’s not my step-brother! Not really! And we don’t live together most of the time.”

Kate’s voice gets louder, but the only word he thinks he can get is a “Tessa!”

“Well, maybe you should have thought about that before you got married!” 

His dad stands up. “Get in the car. We’ll go for a drive.” 

Scott does as he’s told, making his way out to his dad’s car without a word. He sees Jordan sitting at the kitchen table from the jeep, he’d completely forgotten that she would be here. 

His dad drives, down main roads and country lanes, and it’s about twenty minutes before he pulls over on a gravel shoulder. “Scott. I know what Tessa said but… I need to ask you. Did you put any pressure on her to do things she didn’t want to do?” 

“No. I promise. I wouldn’t do that to her. Or anyone.” It’s like his dad doesn’t even know him. 

“I know that. I do. But I never expected that you’d be found in bed with your step-sister either.” Scott winces. “I needed to check. She’s younger than you, and living in the same house, and I needed to make sure.”

“It’s not… it’s not like that.” His dad waits for him to continue. “It’s not just sex.” 

“But you have been having sex.” The words are wooden, perfunctory. 

“Yes.”

His dad takes a breath. “Have you been careful?”

“Yes. We used a condom every time, and Tessa’s on the pill.” 

“At least you’ve been responsible about that.” His dad rubs his eyes. “How long?”

“Since we started…” What even counts as the start of that? His fingers inside her, his tongue on her, his cock inside her? “Or from the beginning?”

“When did it begin?”

“That first weekend of the two weeks Tessa was here in June. We… we kissed.” 

“Two months.” The sound his dad makes is half groan, half bitter laugh. “The two of you have been seeing each other under our noses for two months.” 

“We didn’t want you to find out.” 

“So you knew that what you were doing was wrong.”

“It wasn’t wrong!” His blood is starting to simmer. “We’re not related. And it’s not like we grew up together.”

“You should have told us from the beginning. We could have dealt with this. If you can’t tell the people you love about your relationship, then there’s either something not right about that relationship, or the one with the other people in your life.”

Scott had never thought telling them was an option. Not for a while at least. “You wouldn’t have understood. You’d have made us stop.”

“Because you should have stopped! You should have known to do that yourselves. And… maybe we could have talked it out. We could have tried to come up with some sort of solution. It’s not the… Of course you don’t see her as a sister. But having a hidden relationship with someone you’re living with isn’t healthy. Was that… was that the attraction? That it wouldn’t be allowed?”

“What? No!” Now his blood is boiling. “It wasn’t about her being my step-sister. It’s… because she’s Tessa.” 

“I’m just trying to understand, Scott. You’ve never hid something like this before. You’ve never lied to me and your mom like this.”

“We didn’t lie.” How can his dad understand? He doesn’t know what this has all been like. 

“Scott. Just yesterday you said you were going out with your friends, I’m guessing that didn’t happen?”

He shakes his head.

“And how many other moments did you have like that? Never mind the omission of what was happening. I’m angry that you lied to us. But most of all I’m disappointed. Telling us would have been hard, I know, but it was the right thing to do. And you’re not someone who’s afraid of doing hard things, Scott.”

Scott isn’t angry anymore, he just feels like shit. Maybe they could have worked something out if they’d told them. He’d been so focused on being with Tessa as easily and as often as possible that he hadn’t even thought of trying another way. 

“I’m sorry, Dad. I know I messed up.” It’s low, and a little grudging, but he should say it.

“You did.” His dad’s voice loses its firmness. “But so did I. We should have noticed, we should have seen the possibility. You and Tessa are responsible for your actions, but Kate and I have some responsibility in this too.” 

A car passes by, and its engine in the distance is the only sound until Scott asks, “What happens now?”

His dad places his hands on the steering wheel. “I don’t know. I think that maybe you should go back to Barrie today instead of tomorrow. I can come with you. You need to tell your mom.”

“Shit.” He doesn’t know how he’s going to handle another disappointment talk. “I don’t know how to tell her.” 

“We can talk about that.” His dad starts the car. “But I think you should be the one to tell your mom.”

They drive for a little while. Scott fidgets with the air conditioning until his dad tells him to stop. “What do you think is going to happen with Tessa?” 

“Kate was really upset. Even… no parent wants to walk in on their child like that, even without the added complications. And Tessa is only sixteen.”

“I know. It didn’t all happen at once,” he says in a rush. “We took our time.”

“That’s… that’s good.” His dad drums his fingers on the steering wheel. “It will be hard for us to trust the two of you together.”

Scott doesn’t know exactly what he means by this, but it gives him a little hope. It’s certainly not a ban on seeing one another. 

They’re silent until they get back home. Jordan meets them at the door, and speaks to his dad. “Mom is up in her room. She wants to talk to you.” Once his dad has gone up she turns to him, “We’re going to stay with my nana. Tessa is packing. Mom will be talking to your dad so if you want to speak to her now is your chance.”

He takes off and has to turn back to thank her.

“I’m not doing this for you.” She’s frowning at him, a little like how her sister had back in the beginning. Except this is just scary, not intriguing like it had always been with Tessa, even if he hadn’t wanted to admit it to himself.

He tries to be quiet when he goes down the hall towards Tessa’s room so that Kate doesn’t hear. He’s moving so fast, and then slows in front of her door. What if she doesn’t want to see him? But he needs to make sure she’s okay, needs to see her before he goes. He knocks gently. “Tessa, it’s Scott.”

He can barely hear the quiet “Come in.”

The floor is neat again now, the orange juice and shards of glass cleaned up and the clothes tidied away. Tessa turns around from where she’s packing and her face is all red and puffy. She’s wearing leggings and an NBS hoodie, and she’s playing with its drawstrings.

“I’m so sorry, Tess.” He hugs her to him and she’s stiff at first, but then sinks in. “I’m so, so sorry.” 

“I’m sorry. I should have listened to you.” 

“It’s okay. We’re going to figure things out. It’s going to be hard for a little while, but it will turn out okay.” 

She steps back. “Scott, we can’t.” 

“Why not? I know it must be hard for your mom, but I don’t think my dad would be totally against it. Not if we’re not living in the same house and we’re honest about it.” 

“We can’t do this. It was a mistake, it was always a mistake. We knew this was stupid, and risky. And now we got caught and we should put an end to it.” 

“You don’t mean that.” She can’t. 

She turns around, places more of her perfectly folded clothes into her travel bag. “I do. It would probably have fizzled out anyway. We’re both going back to school, and you’ll be busy deciding about college, and trying to find a new partner. And I should be focusing on dance.”

“That’s not what you said last night.” He’d seen how her face lit up when he told her he wanted to visit her in Toronto, he knows that she wants to be together just as badly as he does. 

“I was being silly. I got carried away. And now I’m making the right decision.” 

Scott moves closer to her, as close as he can get without touching. He doesn’t want to crowd her. “We can keep it a secret. If that’s what you want, I’ll do it. I can meet you in Toronto, we’ll find a way.” 

She starts crying again. He thinks it must hurt with how swollen her eyes already are. “My mom is talking about moving back to London. She said that maybe the marriage was a mistake and that she should be living on her own. She’s so happy, or she was until today. I can’t ruin this for her. She’s done so much for me, all the ballet lessons and master classes and summer camps, and all the other activities. She had time for hardly anything else. And now she finally has something of her own and I can’t… I can’t take that away from her.” 

He puts his hand on her arm gently, and leaves it there when she doesn’t shrug it off. “She’s just shocked. She needs some time to calm down.” 

Tessa shakes her head. “You didn’t see her face. It was like everything was crumbling. I’ve been so selfish, when they first got together and then again with, with…” her voice gets weaker, “getting involved with you.”

She said she was selfish yesterday too, when she was talking about Tanith. It’s probably one of the last words he’d ever think of describing her as, she’s always so thoughtful and kind. She listens better than just about anyone he knows. But then maybe he’s been the one taking up her time, taking all of that part of her until she doesn’t have enough for everyone else.

“We can take a break while we figure things out. We’ll just text. And then when things have died down, when we’re back at school, we can see each other again.”

She hasn’t stopped sobbing. “I’m so sorry, but I can’t. We need to, to take responsibility for our actions, and be mature about things, and m- move on.” 

“Taking responsibility for our actions isn’t abandoning this, Tessa. It’s saying we screwed up and trying to do it better.” 

“We shouldn’t have been doing it in the first place. I’m sorry I started it and dragged you in.” 

“I’m not. I don’t regret any of it. How could I when I lo-“

“Don’t say it,” she pleads, the tears coming even stronger now.

“It’s true.” He’s sniffling too, hot tears burning up behind his eyes. 

She turns to face him and there’s a glitter of anger in amongst all the sadness. “You can’t say it now.” 

He should have said it earlier. He’s probably known for weeks. If he’d have just said it earlier would they be having a different conversation?

“Please just let me keep talking to you. I won’t push you on anything, you can have all the time you need, or your mom needs. But I don’t want to lose you.” 

This hysterical laugh leaves her. “Our parents are married, you can’t lose me.” 

He fucking hates that they’re married. Except if they hadn’t gone and done that, then maybe he never would have met Tessa. 

He moves his hand up and down her arm as she takes deep breaths, trying to calm herself down. When she pulls at the top of her hoodie he sees his old t-shirt peeking out underneath. “My mom has my phone,” she says, voice quiet now. “I won’t be able to contact you. I… I didn’t have time to delete the photos, but I don’t know if she’ll find them, unless she has Jordan look while she watches or something.” 

Fuck. Last week they’d been talking about how when they were apart they’d touch themselves and think of being together, and when he said he liked to look at the photos of her he’d taken she said that she should have some too. She laughed about it after, saying she didn’t really need the pictures, she had no trouble remembering what it looked like anyway.

He swallows deeply. “I’ll delete the ones of you. I don’t know if my parents will take my phone away, but I’ll make sure that no one sees them.”

“Thank you. I’m sorry you have to do that, I…” She hugs him again, with such force that he almost falls over. 

He holds on equally as tight. “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.” 

“How? We can’t be together. I don’t feel okay about that.” 

Is he a shitty person that knowing this is hard for her makes him feel a little bit better? “You’ll be okay, Tess. It’s going to suck for a while, but you’ll be okay.”

“Are you going to be okay? I don’t want to hurt you. I…” She leaves a breath of a kiss on his neck. 

“I’ll be okay, too.” It doesn’t feel that way now, but eventually he’ll have to be. “It’s like you said, I need to figure things out about school, and try to find a new partner.” 

She’s shaking again, and, no matter how much her rubs her back or strokes her hair, he can’t seem to calm her down. “I’m so sorry, Scott.”

“I’m sorry, too.” 

The door opens and she flees backwards. Thankfully, it’s Jordan and not Kate. 

“We’re going now, Tess. Do you want me to help with your stuff?” 

Tessa hands Jordan the big bag and puts her handbag on her shoulder. She’s not moving though. 

“Tess, we need to go.” He doesn’t know Jordan well enough to guess whether she’s testy or anxious.

“Just one minute,” Tessa whispers. 

Her sister sighs and heads back out. 

The door is just shut when she takes his face in her hands and kisses him. He grabs her by the waist, by instinct or necessity, and kisses her like he’s never going to get the chance to do it again. Because he probably won’t. 

Maybe it’s one minute, maybe it’s five, but eventually she steps back and, after one more kiss to his cheek, walks away. 

He slumps down on her bed, and then he starts to cry for real. He lies down and all he can smell is her strawberry shampoo, and the lingering scent of sex. Images of last night and this morning flash before him, brighter than they’d been in reality, brighter than anything he’ll see again. He gets this twisty, jagged feeling of wasted chances when he realises he hadn’t seen her face the last time he made her come. He’s never going to see that again, how her mouth would fall open and her eyelids flutter shut, or hear his name on her lips at that moment, laden with longing and desire and belonging only to her. He’s never going to kiss her again, or have her smile only for him, or make her laugh only the way he can. It’s over. And he didn’t even tell her he loved her. 

He hasn’t had this biting pain in so long, like his heart is trying to wrestle its way out of his chest. It hadn’t been like this when he broke his ankle and messed up his chance of reigniting his ice dance career, or even when they’d all finally come to the conclusion that Alice had grown too tall for him and that they should split. Maybe the only time he’s really felt like this was when his parents were divorcing and he’d had to leave this house. 

He’s not sure how long he lies there, crying and wishing it all away, hoping that if he just stays here long enough time will turn back and it will be this morning and he’ll kiss her and go to his own room and their secret will be safe. And all would be well. 

But it wasn’t all well. Not really. It couldn’t be when they were hiding it from everyone. He should never have put her in a position where she had to lie to her mom, and keep things from her friends. And he shouldn’t have been doing that either. They’d fucked it all up. 

Scott gets up and goes to his room. He throws all his stuff into his suitcase and then he goes downstairs and tells his dad he’s ready to go (he’s not, but he’s not sure he ever will be).


	9. I want it all or nothing, no more in between

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from [Cut To The Feeling](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qlsu7RhOnsQ)

_March 2015_

Tessa is of the firm opinion that she and Scott do marvellously well with their separation. The physical part of it at least, and they’d always said they would keep in contact, so the fact that they message on and off throughout the entire day is absolutely fine. Tanith and Jordan can roll their eyes about it all they want. They might have broken the physical aspect of it too, but he wanted to support her and see her dance, and it would have been rude not to have him come backstage with Alex and Mitch afterwards. And if it had been just the two of them for a while when Alex and Mitch went exploring (Alex had seemed very set on doing this without Tessa’s guidance) and she’d tucked herself under his arm while they talked, well, that was fine too. 

She’d been so tempted to tell him how she felt that night, to tell him she knew that she wanted to try, but she needed to discuss it with their parents first. Which is what she’s about to do. If she can just stop pacing around her room and go knock on their door. It’s silly how nervous she is, she’s an adult and she’s thought long and hard about what she wants, but still. She remembers her mom crying in this room about what a bad mother she was, and how she should have stopped what had happened with Scott before it even began. She never wants to make her mom feel like that again. But Tessa wants to be with Scott now, as adults, and she knows there is nothing wrong with that.

She taps on the door lightly and it’s Joe who tells her to come on in. Tessa had thought about talking to them separately, but it was a conversation she needed to have with them both. He’s in bed with the latest John Grisham, which he puts down when she enters the room. Her mom is over at the vanity, applying her night cream. 

“Hi sweetheart,” her mom says. “Is your room warm enough? We haven’t had the heating on much what with the good weather, but your room is north-facing. There are hot water bottles if you need one.” 

“Oh no, my room is perfect. There’s something I wanted to talk to you about.” She sits at the foot of the bed, her hand reaching out to stroke the soft beige throw. She should have brought it up earlier, instead of now when they’re just about to go to sleep. But it had been so easy to fall into their old routine when she arrived home, she’s been coming here after a run of shows for so long now. 

“What is it, Tessa?” her mom asks, voice patient.

She rubs her hands on her jeans. “I have feelings for Scott.” Her mom sits down beside her, putting an arm around her. “And I know that that might be hard for you to hear, and I’m sorry, but… It’s a different situation now and I want to be open with you both from the start. Not that anything’s started yet.”

“Honey, this isn’t exactly a surprise.” Her mom squeezes her tight.

“It’s not? I’m sorry, was it weird at the party?” She thought they’d kept things… not familial, but not obvious either. 

“Learning that you two had organised the party and had been spending time together, and seeing you get along so well… it was a surprise. But a good one. I- I never wanted to make things as difficult between you as they were. And I’m sorry for that. I was really upset by what happened then, but things are different now. You’re both adults, and you’re thinking it through.” 

Tessa’s eyes are stinging a little. “You’d really be okay with it?” Her relationship with Scott is not something they’ve discussed often since that summer. Her mom said they should draw a line under it when Tessa went back to school. The only times her mom has ever tried to broach it have been before they all had to see each other again, when she’d say that she hoped this time would be easier. But she’d never really done anything to help them find a way to make thing easier. She’d just worked so that they never saw each other for about a year after it all happened. And maybe that had been her way of trying to make things less difficult, but it hadn’t worked. 

“Scott is exactly the type of man I would want you to date – he’s kind, and thoughtful, and takes care of the people he loves. And it’s not ideal that he’s your step-brother, but we’re all very aware that you’ve never thought of yourselves that way.” Tessa doesn’t need to be reminded of how obvious that had been made to her mom.

Joe comes around the bed and joins them, reaching out an arm across Tessa’s shoulder and placing his hand at the back of her mom’s neck. “We love you both very much, and we want you to be happy. If that involves the two of you being together romantically, then that’s something we can adjust to.” 

She hadn’t expected this to be so easy. “What if it doesn’t work out and it’s even more awkward than it was before?”

“You already didn’t speak and hardly ever saw each other, I don’t think it’s things becoming awkward that you’re worried about, Tess,” her mom says gently.

Tessa folds her hands. “I don’t want to lose him again. It would be even harder this time.” 

“It probably would,” Joe agrees. “But that’s the risk involved when you take big steps in a relationship. And you hope for the reward.” 

Her mom lifts her head by the chin. “Sometimes you need to make a leap. It can be scary and complicated and more difficult that you ever expected, but worth it. Worked out for us.” 

Tessa laughs. “Thanks, but can we not compare your relationship to mine with Scott?”

Her mom grimaces. “Good call. Let’s avoid that.” 

“Thank you for telling us about this, Tessa,” Joe says. 

“If we’re going to do this, we need to do it right. And that means being honest with you.”

“Maybe not too honest,” he suggests. “And always keep your door locked in case anyone walks in.”

“Don’t mention that!” her mom cries. “I’ll have flashbacks.” 

“It’s always going to be too soon to joke about that,” Tessa says firmly. With them anyway.

“I’ll make sure to keep that in mind.” Joe pats her hand. 

“I should let the two of you get to sleep, I’m sorry for keeping you up. I just couldn’t put it off until tomorrow.” 

“That’s okay, Tessa.” Her mom kisses her cheek. “You can get a good night’s sleep now, you don’t have to be worrying.” 

She hugs them both, Joe first and then her mom for longer, before she goes down the hall to her room. After she gets changed she calls Scott. They haven’t been doing this much, perhaps because it feels so intimate to have his voice in her ear, but she thinks tonight can be an exception. They’re almost there after all. She tells him how her drive was, and how their parents are doing, and he tells her about the new juvenile team he’s paired up. She falls asleep with the way he says her name still echoing in her ears. 

Tessa receives an unexpected phone call from him the following Thursday afternoon. She’s in a rehearsal room with Tanith, trying to refamiliarise herself with her steps for _The Kingdom of the Shades_ scene in _La Bayadère_ while Tanith pores over napkins. Tessa had thought she knew all the various shades of cream until recently.

“Hi Scott!” she answers. Tanith’s head snaps up with interest, kind of like an animal when it smells food. 

“Hey Tess. I’m in Toronto and I found myself in your neck of the woods and, uh, I know we’re not really seeing each other in person right now, but…”

“I think we’ve been doing that for long enough.” She almost trips over the words she’s trying to get them out so fast. “I’d love to see you.”

“Yeah? That’s, that’s great. Are you sure you’re not busy? I could wait a little while, but I promised my mom and Sam I’d have dinner with them tonight.” 

“I have over an hour until PT, this is perfect. I’m not doing anything important.” Tanith looks overly affronted by this. 

“Perfect. I’ll meet you outside the Walter Carsen Centre?”

“Yes, see you soon.”

“Napkins are important, Tessa!” is Tanith’s first response. “They set the tone for the entire meal! You agreed with me on this when we went to the supplier together!”

“I thought you’d want me to go talk to Scott and tell him how I feel!” Tanith has been telling her she should call him and arrange to meet up for days, but Tessa hadn’t wanted to push him if he wasn’t ready.

“Well, yes, but not if you’re going to insult the sacred art of napkin choosing in the process.” Tanith gets up off the floor and hugs her. “It’s going to be fine, Tessa.”

“I’ll pay attention to the napkins later, I promise.” 

“I think we’ll be a bit too busy discussing whatever happens with you and Scott, but thanks. I should just make Jacqui do it if she thinks it’s so important.” Tanith sighs. “We shouldn’t have gone for the big wedding. Maybe we can still go on a cruise.” 

Tessa laughs. “Cruise weddings seem to work out pretty well. Not so sure I’d want to go with you though.”

“No, you’d definitely end up married too. I think you guys should avoid those for a little while.” 

Tessa shushes her. “Do I look okay?” She steps back and looks in the mirror, her face is all pink. 

“I’d maybe put on some trousers and a coat, it’s not exactly swimsuit weather.” 

“Very clever.” She takes a breath. “Okay, I need to run and throw some clothes on, if I don’t have time after he goes I’ll see you when I’m done with Joannie.” 

Tanith hugs her again. “Toi toi toi!” It’s how they’ve wished each other luck ever since Tessa started at NBS.

Tessa thanks her and rushes out and into the changing rooms, pulling on her clothes quickly and then heading for the front door. 

Scott is waiting for her at the bottom of the steps outside the building. He smiles so wide when he sees her and she takes the steps in twos before throwing her arms around him. “I missed you so much.” Her voice is slightly muffled by his jacket. 

“I missed you, too,” he murmurs into her neck. 

They stay like that for a little while until she steps back. “So, you just happened to be in the neighbourhood?”

He huffs out a laugh. “Well, I wasn’t too far away. I was at the Cricket Club.” Tessa gets this burst of hope in her chest, and she can hear one in his voice too. “I signed a contract to work there.” 

She flings herself at him again, her arms tight around his neck, and this time he lifts her up. “You’re going to be here,” she whispers, too excited to say it louder. 

“Yes, I am.” She thinks there’s a little wonder in his tone.

“I’m sure Montréal would have been great, but I’m, I’m so happy you’re staying. Will you be moving here or commuting from Barrie?” 

“I think I’d like to move here.”

She smiles even wider, her face pressed against his. “I can help you find a place, if you like.” 

“That would be great, thanks Tessa.” He sets her back on the ground. 

As she moves out of his embrace she runs her hands down his arms until her palms are touching his. She clasps their hands together. “Do you have enough time for a walk in the park before you go?”

“Yeah, I’d really like that.” 

Tessa keeps his right hand in hers as they walk over to the crossing. She catches him looking down at their intertwined hands with this disbelieving smile on his face. She blushes when he sees her watching him with a matching smile of her own, and looks down at the ground until the light changes and they start to cross. She feels more like a teenager around him now than she ever did back then. 

The Toronto Music Garden is finally starting to truly come to life again, the grass starting to brighten up a little and crocuses beginning to raise their heads. Tessa loves this park, it’s a break from rehearsal rooms and the insular world of the National Ballet, and her and Tanith’s preferred lunch spot when the weather is good. It’s not too busy at this time - some tourists and sedate walkers, and then some kids out from school, but it has a buzz to it now that spring is here. 

She leads Scott up one of her favourite paths, under the Music Pavilion which holds free concerts in the summer, and over past the willows to where the cherry blossoms are waiting to bloom, the harbour right behind. There’s a little bench there where she likes to sit and think, or talk to Tanith. She used to meet her here when Tanith was in the corps and Tessa was in her last years at NBS, and she thinks that they probably talked about Scott more than once. 

She thought she’d know how to say things when she got here, but she’s still sort of stuck. So she goes for something tangible. “Would you like to come with me to Tanith’s wedding? As my date?” He doesn’t say anything, and this sets her off on a ramble. “I understand if not, I’m the maid of honour so I’m going to be busy. Jordan is going too, but maybe you wouldn’t want to hang out with her during the dinner. I’d be free after that though, and everyone is going to stay around for the next day so that should be fun. It’s at this fancy hotel on Lake Erie, it’s beautiful, I’ve been down with her twice to decide on things…”

Scott cradles her face with his hand. “Tessa. I think I’d go just about anywhere you asked with you.” 

She leans into his palm a little. “Okay. That’s good. That’s really, really good.” 

“Have you had enough time to think about what you want?” He strokes her cheek.

She nods. “Have you?”

“Yeah. I’m sure.”

“Me too. I talked to Mom and Joe about it when I was staying there last weekend.” 

“I kind of hoped you had,” he admits. “I talked to them too, well, mainly Dad but then Kate at the end.” 

“Did they have you on speaker?” she asks.

“Yes! Always!”

She laughs. “They’re so weird. I don’t think Joe has ever been surprised by any present I’ve got him, he’s probably always there when I ask Mom for advice.” 

“It was a good talk though. Easier than I expected.”

“Mine too. My mom told me that sometimes we have to leap.” 

He leans his head down until their noses are touching and his lips are a breath away. “You ready?”

Tessa kisses him, the softest of touches at first, and then firmer as they open up to one another. She tangles her fingers in his hair and he draws her closer to him. He really is the best kisser. He knows exactly when to quicken the pace and when to slow it down. He knows when she wants the pressure of his teeth against her lips. He knows her, and she knows him, even after all this time.

“That’s still amazing,” he says, in between heavy breaths, when they pause.

“The best.” She kisses him again quickly as punctuation. 

“So,” he rubs his hand up and down the back of her coat, “we’re doing this.” 

“We are. Properly.”

“We’re going to do it right. Can I take you out?”

“Yes,” she giggles. “Anytime.” 

“We’re going to make out in the back of the movies.” He kisses her forehead. “We’re going to hold hands across a restaurant table.” He kisses her cheek. “We’re going to kiss under some more trees in parks.” He kisses her neck.

“All on the one date?” she teases.

“If you like. Or we can spread them out.”

“As long we get to do them, I don’t mind.” 

His lips return to hers. “Will we take things a little slower this time?” 

“Yes. I think that would be a good idea. We don’t need to rush.” 

“We’ve got all the time we need.” He kisses her again, before breaking it off. “Or maybe that’s not quite accurate right now. Do you need to get back?”

She checks her phone. All she needs to do is cross the road really. “I can stay five more minutes.” 

They make out for five minutes in the open air and then he walks her back, his hand tight around hers. When they reach the steps he asks, “Are you free on Saturday?”

“Yes. I have to go to a fitting in the morning, but I could meet you in the afternoon.”

“The afternoon it is.” He kisses her on the cheek. “See you soon, Tess.” 

She waits to wave goodbye and then she goes back in, head all hazy, hair all ruffled, and mouth thoroughly kissed.

 

_April 2015_

They do marvellously well on the taking things slow front. Fifteen dates in three weeks is taking things slow no matter what Jordan says or how much Tanith cackles. And he doesn’t even put his hand under her shirt until the seventh date, it’s practically puritanical. They ease into things other than kissing rather than rushing right in - his hand sneaking up her back at the aquarium, hers on his Olympian abs when he takes her skating at the rink in Barrie, pressing flush against each other in an empty hallway with her rocking her skirt-clad hips into his dress trousers at one of the nicest restaurants in Toronto. 

That’s the night they decide they should just go ahead and jump in, helped along a little by a policeman politely knocking on Scott’s car window when he’s walking by and sees Tessa half-straddling him while his hands are under her blouse. In their defence, there had been no one else on the street outside Tessa’s apartment block when they started. 

“I think I should be more embarrassed than I am, but this is nothing,” she observes as she fixes up her blouse. 

Scott takes her hand and kisses it. “We’ve had the worst experience of being caught.” 

“It actually could have been worse. Sometimes I have these nightmares where…”

He shakes his head furiously. “Nope. Not listening. I’d have died on the spot.” 

“Oh, me too.” She shivers. “I still don’t think I could have sex in that house again.”

“Really? Might be good to replace that bad memory with some good ones.”

“Scott!” Now that she thinks about it though… “Well, we never did get to do it in your room.” 

“You really do want to make my dreams come true, huh?” He leans over and kisses her again.

She smooths his hair back down. “I’d invite you up but I know you have a six a.m. start tomorrow. Are you still free this weekend?”

“Yeah, I was thinking we could go out to the island.”

“You should stay with me. Friday and Saturday.” 

“Two nights?” he says, voice teasing. “You must really like me.”

“We have a lot of catching up to do.” She shrugs, like it’s nothing momentous.

“I can’t wait to catch up with you like that.” He rests his hand on her thigh, rubbing his thumb back and forth, looking a little pensive now. “Are you nervous?”

“A little.” She wants to be honest with him always. “But… it’s okay if things are different. We’re older now, it shouldn’t be exactly the same. And I want to be with you.”

“I want to be with you, too.” He smiles. “I’ll bring food and cook you dinner. I’m pretty good now.”

“I… can follow detailed instructions if you want me to help.”

“As long as I get to spend time with you I’m good.” He kisses her softly. “I’d better be going.”

“Call me when you get home?”

“Of course.” 

She kisses him one last time before going upstairs, making a list of all she has to do over the next two days as she goes. Tessa is pretty sure Tanith will be understanding about trying to finalise the seating arrangements as soon as possible if it means that her maid of honour gets to spend the weekend with her boyfriend (at least, that’s what she thinks he is. It sounds a little lacking though). 

When Friday evening arrives she does feel nervous. But it’s not the anxious, churning stomach type. It’s the warm, fizzy kind of feeling. It’s the anticipation she has for a performance when she feels completely prepared, not the fear she had when she was little. 

Scott calls when he’s at the door to her building and she buzzes him up. She walks into the hall to wait for him by the door, feeling a little stupid about it seeing as he has to make it up three flights of stairs or take the elevator. She fidgets with her dress in the mirror, it’s just a simple black one she often throws on before coming home from work, but it’s soft to touch and makes her boobs looks great. Her fingers are fixing up her hair when the knock comes on the door.

He has two bags of groceries as well as a duffel bag, and he looks for all the world as if he’s coming home.

Tessa takes the groceries bags from his arms and kisses him on the cheek. “Welcome.” 

He hasn’t actually been in here before, they’d probably both known it would only end with one thing (or a couple variations on that theme), and they hadn’t been quite ready for that until now. After he leaves his shoes at the door beside hers, he admires her living room, telling her he likes the map with the pins for the places she’s visited, as they walk towards the kitchen. He shrugs off his jacket before he helps her unpack the food into the fridge and cupboards, and she sees how nicely he’s dressed, white shirt and fancy jeans.

“You look good,” she says.

“You always do.” He kisses her on the cheek as he moves past her to put some prawns in the fridge. “Alex may have sent me photos of clothes I may not have known that I owned when I told her I was staying with you this weekend.” 

Tessa laughs. “Is she focusing on being your stylist now that the LSATs are done?” 

“She told me that she thinks maybe she can hand over some of her duties to you once she starts law school, but she still wants to take care of my dating clothes so that it will be a surprise for you, and so I don’t embarrass her with what I might choose.” He frowns, the one that makes him look like a sullen teen again. “I think I can select outfits perfectly well by myself.”

“I’m sure you can.” She tugs on his hand, “Would you like a tour?” He nods and she leads him back out through the living room and down the hall. “This is the bathroom, I have a little ensuite in my room too so I don’t use it all that much. It has Tanith’s favourite soap.” She opens the door of the smaller bedroom. “This is the guest room. It’s mainly the storage space for my bridesmaid dress right now. Do you want to see it?”

Tessa loves that dress, both the pale pink colour and the way it flows. They’re all in pink, but in different shades, Brooke, who was in Tanith’s year at NBS, in a bright tone and Tanith’s cousin in a colour near lilac. Even Tanith has a hint of pink at the bottom of her train. 

“Is that bad luck?”

“I’m pretty sure that’s just the actual bridal gowns.”

He pulls her in. “Is it okay if I wait until I see you wearing it?”

“Yes.” She kisses his cheek. “Do you want to see my room next?”

Scott squeezes her hand and she leads him in. 

“No more pink bedsheets?” he asks.

“I still have some at home, but I like the white.” Jordan thinks it’s sterile, but Tessa likes the calm. She thinks there’s enough going on with the bookshelves and the fresh flowers to keep it from being boring. 

“Must be hard to keep clean,” Scott notes.

“Well, you know that I am very fastidious about tidying up.” She reaches up to kiss him, moving her hips slowly against his. 

He rubs his thumbs down the seams at the sides of her dress. “Do you want to stay in here or have dinner first?”

“Stay here. I think we’ve waited long enough.” 

He lifts her up and carries her over to the bed, setting her down with such gentleness.

She starts unbuttoning his shirt, running her fingers down his chest as she does so, noticing the effect it has on his breathing. “I know I said it before, but the whole Olympian thing really worked out for you.” 

He laughs, and his abs contract against her hands. “You should have seen me last year, it was more impressive then.”

“I wish I had,” she says. Not just to fully experience the way he had looked back then, but to be there for him through all of that. 

“We’re here now.” He kisses her forehead and gathers his hands at the hem of her dress. “Is this okay?” 

She nods, and he lifts it over her head. 

“You’re beautiful,” he says. He’s told her this since they got back together, frequently, but there’s something about the wonder in how he says it now that reminds her of him back then. 

“So are you.” She reaches for his jeans, checking in to make sure he’s ready, and starts to take them off when he tells her yes.

His hands reach out and she places them on her bra, and hums when he traces the delicately embroidered black lace flowers with his fingers. It’s the fanciest lingerie Tessa’s ever owned. Tanith made her buy it a few weeks ago when they’d gone shopping for what she would wear on her wedding night. 

She reclines and he follows, reaching behind her back to undo her bra. He removes it so carefully before lowering his mouth to her left breast and starting to lay kisses up and over its peak while he caresses the other with his hand. It’s soft and sweet, and she loves him for it, but she’s also desperate for something more, so she rocks her hips into his and rubs her lacy underwear against his plain black boxers. 

He laughs into her skin and she feels it rumble through her. “You okay, Tess?” 

“More, please. It’s been so long.” 

“I know,” and she can hear just how long in his voice, “so I want this to be good for you.” 

“More is good. I just want to feel you.” She _needs_ to feel him. “We have so much time.” 

She feels his smile on her body, and then his hands quickly moving down to her underwear and pulling them down her legs. The ascent of his hands is slower, like he’s refamilarising himself with every plane and curve. He touches her scars with the lightest of grazes, and then bends his head and kisses them. 

“I’m sorry I never reached out to you then. Even just to say I was sorry that you were in pain.” 

As much as she wants him to just hurry up, she’s not going to leave him feeling bad about the past. She sits back up. “You did though. At, uh, Charlie and Nicole’s wedding? You told me you were sorry, and that you hoped I’d feel better soon and… you might have said you could make me feel better for while at least? Or I might have made that up. Did we make out in a supply closet that night?”

“I didn’t know if we had, or if I was just drunk, but if we both think it happened…”

She kisses him, perhaps just as messily as she had back then. “Good. It was always great in my memories.”

“Mine too. We really liked to just rush into things back then, didn’t we?”

“Not this time though. This time we’ve thought it through. And they say that third time’s the charm.” 

He grins in response and then works his mouth down the centre of her body to her belly button piercing and starts to suck. As he does so he runs a finger over her hip and down her folds, stroking up and down before he finally enters her. Apparently he can still sense exactly what she likes, probably helped along by the sounds she’s now free to make, because he soon adds another and starts to scissor them back and forth, pressing the heel of his hand against her clit. He alternates between sucking her piercing and tugging on it with his teeth until the moment he slides in a third finger when he abruptly pops his lips off the piercing and then places them on her clit. She rolls back her head, her orgasm about to take over, when he lifts his face and pauses the movement of his fingers.

“Tess, babe, can you look at me? Can I see your face when you come?” His voice is hoarse, and there’s this note of vulnerability to it, like he needs this. 

When she looks down at him his eyes are dark, his lips are glistening and his hair is wrecked from how tightly she’s been grasping it. She just nods, unable to find any words that make sense. He keeps his eyes on hers as he curls his fingers just right and sucks on her clit. And then she’s coming and he’s guiding her through it, accentuating every wave of pleasure she feels. 

She’s not expecting it when after sucking his fingers he licks her, tongue broad and thorough, and then pushes his tongue into her entrance. She laces her legs over his shoulders and he puts one arm around her hips, burying his face in her. She keeps saying his name, like it’s the answer to all the questions she’s ever asked. He starts moving his tongue, and her brain is so hazy that it takes her until the first ‘s’ to realise that he’s spelling out her name. And that just makes her press her thighs closer together around his head. After he finishes with her name he starts on his own, and this feels even better, the rounded shape of the inner letters naturally fitting around her and then the final two ‘t’s hitting her upper walls. He places his thumb on her clit then too, and this orgasm is even stronger than the first, his name branding into her like it was always meant to be hers to wear. 

Tessa needs a minute to recover afterwards, and he gives it to her like he’s given her everything else, holding her close and rubbing her back, her bare chest against his, their heartbeats seeking one another’s, as her breathing calms down. 

“Do you want a break?” he asks her. “Time to refuel?” 

She shakes her head where it’s buried in the crevice between his shoulder and his neck. “Want to feel you in me.” She wants all of him, right now. No more waiting. 

“You’re sure?” 

She raises her head and kisses him, tasting herself on his tongue. “So sure.” 

“I, uh, I brought condoms. They’re in my bag.” 

“I have some. First drawer in the dresser.” After he leaves her arms she seriously considers asking him if he’s okay with forgoing condoms. She’s clean and has an IUD, and she knows that Scott, who’s always been so conscientious and caring, has to be clean too. But then she thinks that it would be too much for her. It’s overwhelming, the idea of him bare inside her, closer than close. She wants it, but it almost seems too powerful for right now. Like that would unspool her completely, leave her completely unmade and undone. Maybe that can wait a little while, let them connect again like they did back then before taking that next step. 

When he returns to her she slips his boxers down his legs as he opens the wrapper, the crinkling sound mixing with both their heavy breathing. 

“Can I put it on?” she asks, and he nods, eyes closing. 

She leans her head down and licks him first, and when he bucks forward just a little she takes him in her mouth, looking up at how he’s biting his lip, then swirling her tongue around his tip and kissing him there before she slides the condom on.

“I’m going to go down on you later,” she informs him. “I’ve gotten better at it.” 

He clutches at her hair. “You were amazing back then.” Even if that had been her earliest experience, it had also been her best. She’s never enjoyed going down on guys the way she had with Scott, never actually looked forward to it like she is now. 

But not as much as she’s looking forward to having him inside her again. 

She lies back down, interlacing his hand with hers and pulling him with her. “You want to see my face when I come, right?” 

He nods, grateful, and then she remembers that their last time had been with him at her back. She’s so filled with this sadness for those two earnest, slightly reckless, love-struck teens and then so fucking joyful that she gets to be here with him again. 

“You ready?” he asks when he lines up, and she whispers her response, cradling his face with her hand and running her thumb over his lips. 

The feeling of him entering her is everything she could have wanted - slow, rich and full. No one else has ever felt this good, and it’s not just that he was her first and she’s sentimental, it’s that he’s him and she’s her and this was always what they were meant to be doing, the way they were always meant to fit. 

“Tess, are you okay?” His thumb is at the corner of her eye, and it’s when he brushes her tear away that she realises that she’s crying.

“I am. I’m just so happy. And… I missed you. I missed this.” 

He kisses her, soft and strong and slow and true. “I missed you, too. It’s… not like this with anyone else.” Maybe it’s the light, or the moisture still in her eyes, but she thinks he might be tearing up too. 

“Just us.” She puts her hand at the back of his head and coaxes him down to her lips again, raising her hips and circling them against his as she does so. 

And then he thrusts into her and it’s like a memory and a premonition all at once. Past and future and present right here in this bed, the two of them moving together they way only they can. He’s not quite as gentle now, his hands that bit tighter on her hips, moving harder faster, and she isn’t either. Her nails firm on his back and her teeth grazing his collarbone. 

“I never want to stop,” he whispers in her ear, and maybe he just means now or maybe he means forever, and it might be crazy but either is fine with her. 

“Then don’t,” she tells him. “Don’t ever stop.” 

He flips them over, settling back into her white pillows, and she slides up and down his cock, her hands tight on his shoulders before slamming her hips down and moving them against his. They find their rhythm with his mouth at her neck, them each with a hand in the other’s hair, his other hand on the small of her back and hers on his arm. It’s interdependent movement, somehow both skilled and slightly sloppy, their bodies finding each other again. They move as one and when she comes it’s with his name on her lips and stars in her eyes, him following right after like she’s led him to a place that’s just theirs. 

She clings onto him after as she eases her breathing, and he does the same to her, neither ready to let go. 

“So that’s still amazing too,” he says into her shoulder, and she laughs and laughs.

“Still the best.” She kisses him before sliding off and turning to fall on her back. 

“Do you want to clean up?”

“I’m just going to lie here for a little second.” She clasps his hand in hers and squeezes. 

“Okay.” He leans over and places a kiss on her cheek before getting up off the bed and heading towards her ensuite. “I can put this in the trash, right? No more ill-advised disposal methods?”

“Please do,” she calls. She pushes herself back up and off the bed, picking up his shirt from the floor and putting it on.

He grins when he sees her, like she’s a fantasy come to life, and maybe she is, because he is for her right now with his bed hair and her marks all over him.

“I’m going to the bathroom.” She twirls as she walks past him, playing with the hem of his shirt where it hits her upper thighs.

He’s pulled his boxers and jeans back on when she comes out. She slips on some fresh underwear and goes over to where he’s sitting at the foot of her bed. He does up the buttons on his shirt for her as she tries to fix his hair. “Do you want dinner now, Tess?” he asks.

“Yeah, that would be good.” She’s starving. 

She tucks herself under his arm as they walk back into the kitchen and then listens intently as he gives her instructions on how to help him make the paella. He tells her that he got the recipe from Carmen after she emailed to apologise about her and Carlotta making out in the pantry at the party. 

Tessa checks her phone when she sees it lying on the counter from earlier and tries not to freak out when she sees two missed calls from her mom. There is no way her mom knew they were having sex, and anyway, she’s fine with their relationship now. 

She still feels a little weird calling her back while wearing not much other than his shirt, but her mom usually doesn’t ring twice if she doesn’t get a response unless something is up so she wants to speak to her. 

“Hi honey!” Her mom sounds perfectly normal anyway.

“Hi Mom. You were calling me earlier?” 

“Yes, I finally finished _Big Little Lies_ and I wanted to talk to you about it!” She’d left the book with her mom when she finished with it last weekend.

“We should definitely do that, but I’m actually with Scott right now, so maybe later?” Later meaning like Sunday evening when he’s back in Barrie. 

“Oh. On a date?” Her mom drops her voice to a whisper. 

“Yes, Mom. On a date.” 

Scott’s been focusing on gathering the ingredients they’ll need but he looks up and says, “Tell her I say hi.”

“Scott says hi.”

“Oh, tell him we say hi too! Don’t we, Joe?” 

“Yes. Hello to both of you.” They really do love putting people on speaker. 

“Hi Joe.” 

None of them say anything for a minute until her mom pipes up with, “Well, we’ll let you go then! Have a good time! Maybe the four of us should go out for dinner sometime soon.” 

That seems a little ambitious for just right now, Tessa thinks they could all do with a little time to adjust first, but she appreciates her mom’s suggestion. “Yeah, that would be really nice. Maybe after Scott is settled here in Toronto.” He’s working out the rest of April at the rink in Barrie. She knows he’s a little sad to be leaving the kids he’s been working with, but excited for the new challenge ahead.

“Sure. I’ll talk to you later, Tess. Love you.”

“Love you too, Mom.” 

After she places the phone back down on the counter Scott comes over and wraps her into his arms. “It really is different this time,” he murmurs into her hair.

“It really is,” she echoes. 

“Do you think everyone else is going to get on board too?” 

Jordan already is, except for a gag order on any details of their sex life which Tessa is only too happy to fulfil. She thinks Charlie will be fine with it, Danny too. Her own brothers might take a little more time, but they’ve never really had a chance to get to know Scott properly anyway. Once they see what he’s like things will work themselves out. 

“Maybe it will take longer than others for some, but we’ll get there. They’ll get used to it eventually.” 

She feels a little nervous after saying that, a little more vulnerable showing such surety that this will last here in the cold light of her kitchen. 

But Scott just holds her closer and says, “We have all the time in the world.”

It’s so safe here in his arms, it always has been, and it makes her feel ready to tell him anything, everything. “I love you,” she says, into his chest right over his heart. “I know it’s early, but I love you.” His arms are still secure around her and when she looks up into his waiting eyes she sees how she feels radiating back. “I didn’t say it back, but I loved you then, and I love you now.” 

“I love you, too.” The words flow through her, warm and bright. “I should have said it earlier back then, not just at the end.”

“It wasn’t the end though,” she smiles, even if her eyes are filling up again. “It wasn’t the end. It was just a long pause. Until we were ready to do it right.” 

“I’m going to make sure we get things right this time, Tessa. I’ll do everything that I can.” His voice is so determined, so clear. 

“I know you will. So will I.” She kisses him and the certainly of this settles into her bones.

“You know, I’m actually really glad they went on that stupid cruise,” Scott says.

She laughs. “I think it’s working out pretty well for all of us in the end.” 

“It was worth it.”

She kisses his cheek. “Definitely.”

“I love you,” he says, soft and a little shy.

“I love you, too.”

“I’m probably going to be telling you that a lot now that we’re saying it.” 

“Good. I like hearing it.” She loves hearing it, doesn’t think it could ever get old. 

Scott whispers it again into her ear and she holds him closer. Their breathing falls into one, their hearts beating to the same rhythm. His arms feel like home and his lips on hers feels like all the adventures to come. But for now they’re here. Just them, and just right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I never expected to write a 50k step-sibling fic in seventeen days, but here we are! Thanks so much to everyone who helped and encouraged me, and let me know that you were excited and invested <3 
> 
> Happy Valentine's Day my loves, and if you have time please let me know what you thought!


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